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That Farm

RECOUNTING THE ADVENTURES OF A
DRY-GOODS MERCHANT WHO WENT
BACK TO THE LAND

Illustrated from photographs

BY

HARRISON WHITTINGHAM

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
IQI4

Copyright, 1912, 1913, 1914, by
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CoMPANY

All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
induding the Scandinavian

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CHAPTER

VI.

VIII.

CONTENTS

In which I encounter the farm real
estate man and lease a vaca-
tion home.

In which the lease is Pe? on
actual farming operations begun

In which I become convinced that
Imust buy thefarm .

In which I close the deal and start
farming operations in earnest

In which building operations and
hog cholera claim attention, and
we decide to make the farm our
headquarters .

In which old Layton no) a eee
story, and I become my own
farm boss and engage Waters

In which spring plowing and
planting, the help problem,
horses, and water supply absorb
my-attention .

In which I declare my Mee
dence as a dairyman, and Mrs.
Whittingham catches the ar
dening fever . Pee '

Vv

PAGE

42

56

65

76

AIT.

ALY.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

CONTENTS

In which the fight on the milk trust
is waged and won . ;

In which I indulge in tern
and personalities P

In which an old mill is ene
and a truck garden developed

In which I consider the hen, while
Cupid steals into our kitchen

In which I come to know Tom
Stevens and Ben Highland bet-
ter, and get the farm ona Pee
basis RO A hi

In which my son Junior pee
us to a new industry — dogs;
and in which the angels of birth
and death visit the farm .

In which we become acquainted
with the farmer’s bane — sum-
mer drought — and Junior be-
comes a member of the firm .

In which I become interested in
turkeys, and the hog business,
under Junior’s pe begins
to pay ;

In which the vegetable Lee and
dairy make progress . he

In which I record the more impor-
tant events of a successful year,
and append a balance sheet .

PAGE

85

oF

103

116

125

143

159

175

183

194

CONTENTS vii

CHAPTER
| XIX. In which I take stock of my failures
and successes, and arrive at a few
conclusions on business farming 210

XX. In which I light a cigar on the ver-
andaandphilosophize . . . 225

ILLUSTRATIONS

The old mill was at first only a picturesque
Be a ceshy Gh) we er at Ee Ar

FACING PAGE
The Holsteins. There is a certain satisfac-
Hea im raising thoroughbreds ..4) 2/5. |. 48"
The hennery is 150 feet longand15 feet wide 42

A corner of the cattle barn, showing the
Reser STAMCHIONS 5.20). Je wine) oe

The retail milk delivery wagon . = . +» 92°

Weber’s garden was laid out so that it
might be tended aie: icity horse instead }
of hand labor . . ‘| 108

The contract for the corn husking was
given to one man ae a Santon Portail? i NRE

Seven beautiful ded tatty beginning of
tue kennel... NE Ey Sa

‘The hog industry is Junior’s pet hobby . 206

That Farm ix

THAT FARM

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH I ENCOUNTER THE FARM REAL ESTATE
MAN AND LEASE A VACATION HOME

URING the past ten or twelve years the
critics among my friends have been grad-
ually won over to my way of thinking on the

general proposition, “‘Can a city man become a suc-
cessful farmer?” But I still differ from them on a
point of comparative values. ‘To me the extra-
ordinary thing is that, with my vast ignorance of
matters agricultural — and I am just beginning to
realize the vastness of it—I have actually been
able to make things grow and to wrest a net profit
from the willing but misused soil. To my friends,
most of whom are still hunched up before roll-top
desks, fatuously supposing that they are engaged
in something important, the wonder is that a hu-
man being should exist with a mind so bizarre that
he could give up a perfectly good dry-goods busi-
ness in a thriving city for the sake of spending his
mature years among the sun-scorched cornfields
and the unclean cows of an up-state farm, and.

3

THAT FARM

wrth luck so phenomenal as to enable him to “get
away with the whole thing.”

If I agreed with my friends on this point, I
should now devote my pen-play to the task of ex-
pressing the philosophy of the situation. I should
explain that the longing for the soil was probably
bred in my bones, that some guardian angel had
led me through the mazes of a business career and
kept my heart true to the impulses of youth —
and I should doubtless bore you to death.

But since I am convinced that the things worth
telling about are the methods by which I have
achieved a moderate measure of practical success, I
shall keep my feet planted on the solid earth and
will try to set forth those things that would have
been most valuable to me a few years ago.

It is perhaps necessary to add that I am that
converted merchant whom my friends still mar-
vel over. I did give up a lucrative business, and I
did it with my eyes open. A few decades of ex-
perience had knocked some of the rashness of youth
out of me, and I did the thing advisedly and in
cold blood. I believed that it was the best thing
for my wife and myself, and deep down in my heart
I knew I could make a business success of it.

However, this was not the sudden jump that it
sounds. It took several years for me to come
around to this point of view, and perhaps a brief

4 .

THAT FARM

tracing of the steps may serve to remove the mys-
tery from what my friends still consider an extra-
ordinary act.

Behold me, then, Harrison Whittingham, head
of the Melvin & Whittingham Dry-Goods Com-
pany, with an average income of something more
than $30,000 a year, and a bit laid by; vice-presi-
dent of the Board of Trade and a charter member
of the City Club; owner of a substantial stone
house and stable on Centre Street; well established
in the community, and apparently fixed for life; a
man whose birthdays had long since become days
of reflection instead of celebration, but still sound
in mind and body.

Most insidiously did the rural serpent enter
this most respectable and well-established urban
Eden. It was fifteen years ago, and it all came
about because of the annual annoyance of solving
the summer problem. In desperation I came
up here and rented this farm as a half-hearted ex-
periment.

The vacation question is a terrible bore to the
average business man with a family. Summer
hotels, no matter where they are, lack the free-
dom and comfort of home — the home feeling, in
other words, which is the most restful influence
in the world. The furnished cottage is, as a rule,
such only in name, for one must move a carload

5

THAT FARM

of furniture out from the city to make the cot-
tage habitable. I knew the disadvantages of all
of these before I finally hit upon the farm idea.
In discussing the subject with my wife we con-
cluded that there were, at least, possibilities in the
country, so in the early spring 1 began to look
around for a place to spend the following summer.

I started with the real estate agents, and I don’t
think there is another line of business, except,
perhaps, life insurance, that can boast of such per-
sistently energetic representatives. My office be-
came a magnet for them, and each day’s mail
brought descriptions of farms in every section of
the country, and I read every one of them. New
England estates highly improved, and others that
needed a little doing over; Florida fruit lands,
Texas cattle ranches, and Virginia estates with
their alluvial James River bottom lands and their
romantic antebellum history of which I never
tire of reading; Mississippi Valley farms, bargains
in grain farms out through Minnesota and the
Dakotas, and the virgin land in the wonderful
Canadian Northwest; apple growing in Oregon was
held up before me with all its glittering possibilities,
and for two hours one day a most active and inter-
esting tongue led me through the sunshine and the
roses and the Spanish Missions of California and off
into the Imperial Valley to El Centro, where they

6

THAT FARM

irrigate and make the desert bloom, and where
my old friend Allen Kelly preaches industry and
progress through his newspaper to the indolent
ones there on the edge of Mexico. It was all in-
teresting in a way because it served to push my
horizon back beyond the Hudson, and I was re-
minded once more that the constructive part of
the United States stretches away in three direc-
tions from America’s greatest port of entry.

But | was tethered to my business, in a way; so
out of the mass of farm descriptions I saved only
those that were within a couple of hours of my city
desk, and to many of them I made fruitless pil-
grimages in search of something to suit me.

If at the termination of human events there is to
be required of us in another world an explanation
of our earthly acts I tremble for the real estate
man when he undertakes to bridge that awful gulf
between his printed and illustrated description of
a farm and the actual property itself. Into his
written statements distorted and misleading sen-
tences will find their way just as cotton threads
will sometimes creep into “all silk”? material, but
the pictures — how is the camera made to tell such
unnatural stories!

One place in particular cemented itself to my
memory, and time beyond all the generosity of
hope could never destroy the impression it made

7

THAT FARM

upon me. It was down on Long Island and was “A
Gentleman’s Country Estate.” (I am speaking
of the printed description, of course.) ‘The manor-
house, rich in master’s bedrooms and baths, rested
like an architectural diamond in a setting of beau-
tiful shrubbery. The picture, I recall, was a little
out of focus and the effect was soft and artistic.
I journeyed fifty miles to nibble at that bait, and
as many miles back steeped in anger and regret.
Perhaps at one time it had been a “gentleman’s
country estate,” but when I saw it the halls that
had once housed that august scion of elegance and
refinement were warped and worn. The place be-
longed to a lady who occupied it in all its irrepar-
able decay. The roof was sagged and, in spots,
unshingled against the elements. Windows and
doors were out of plumb and the stone flooring on
the veranda reminded one of the ancient ways in
the Alhambra. Two Muscovy ducks splashed
about in a little lake near the house that was al-
most hidden in its growth of lily pads, and by an
unweeded pathway that led to an overgrown gar-
den a stone figure of Pan, minus his flute, clung
tenaciously to his crumbling pedestal. Because
of good material and the honesty of builders in
other days the barn still stood, but out through its
holey roof one got an unobstructed view up toward
his Maker. A lone pigeon flew across the haymow

8

THAT FARM

and disappeared through a sashless window, and
downstairs in one of the box stalls a knee-sprung
ginny mule dozed and fanned flies. There were
I15 acres of that wind-swept wilderness of sand,
and the price of it was $20,000.

One day an industrious agent who had brought
to my attention some twenty-odd of the seventy-
five farms I had inspected, wrote me a most al-
luring description of a farm that he thought would
just suit me. It was the first week in May when
my wife and I went to look at the property. The
village impressed us very favorably when we
alighted from the train; it was clean and comfort-
able-looking and set in the most attractive, rolling
country 800 feet above the sea. We drove three
miles out from the village to the farm, but we did
not go beyond the entrance to the place — the first
impression was enough. Spring had worked its
beautiful May coloring into everything else, but
the brush had skipped on that particular spot.
My wife and | looked hopelessly at each other, for
we had reached a verdict.

The local real estate man drove us back to the
town over another road in order to show us a little
more of the country. About a mile and a half
from the village we came upon a rather attractive
place on the right of the turnpike. The unten-
anted house with its tightly closed blinds stood

9

THAT FARM

among the trees as though ashamed of the neglect
it was suffering. We stopped in front of the gate-
way and I asked about the property. Our guide
informed us that it was hard to tell who the prop-
erty belonged to, for it changed hands so often;
the caretaker, however, would show us about if
we cared to see it; so we drove in. The place, we
learned, was owned by a wholesale coffee merchant
in the city, who would probably be glad to get some
income from it in the form of monthly rental, for the
coffee business was none too good just then.

There, were 400acres in the farm) neark- all
cleared and arable; 300 acres, with the residence
and outbuildings, on the east side of the highway,
and 100 acres on the west. The outbuildings
consisted of a cattle barn 145 feet long with
accommodations for seventy head of stock and
storage room for 300 tons of hay; a horse barn
containing twenty box stalls, ten standing stalls,
harness room, carriage room, etc.; chicken house,
piggery, tool house, corncrib, blacksmith shop, and
three tenant houses. On the 100-acre tract a grist
mill stood by the side of a stream that ran through
the entire length of the property.

A great deal of money had undoubtedly been
spent in the improvements, for they were more
elaborate than one usually finds on a farm. The
eaves of the colonial roofs on the barns, for ex-

fe)

THAT FARM

ample, were supported by ornamental wooden
braces, and each of the three cupolas was sur-
mounted by a handsome weather vane. Absence
of paint was the worst affliction the buildings suf-
fered from, but that had manifested itself only
in spots; the foundations and sills were all in
very good condition. Of course the general neg-
lect cast a somewhat gloomy light over everything,
but it was, nevertheless, by no means an unat-
tractive farm.

The caretaker was an old man who had served
in different capacities on the place since the build-
ings were erected—in fact, he had assisted in build-
ing them. Time had developed in him a sort of
feeling of ownership for the property, and he was
inclined to regard our visit as an intrusion until
we came to inspect the residence; then his reticence
disappeared. He pointed with pride to the corner-
stone which he had helped to set in place; in the
stone were cut the initials “J. H. B., 1874.’ James
H. Bellair had built the house at a cost of $50,000,
so the old man informed us as he fumbled with the
big brass key in the front door. ‘The house was
attractive in a way, but hardly the style of archi-
tecture that one would choose nowadays for a
country dwelling; nevertheless, finding such a
house on a property, there are few who would tear
it down simply to exhibit in a new one their own

II

THAT FARM

peculiar ideas, more or less practical, of a summer
home.

The walls were brick-filled and stood upon a
splendid foundation around a cellar under the entire
house. The main hallway, 20 feet wide, was
floored with alternate squares of gray and white
marble. <A broad stairway rising from the centre
of the far end, and divided at a landing, destroyed
the suggestion of the conventional, useless hallway.
The inside trim throughout was black walnut,
which seemed terribly sombre at first, but even as
we walked about the house it grew on us. On the
left of the hallway was a large room the entire
length of the house; this, the old fellow informed
us, was originally the “picture gallery, and it had
the finest paintings you ever seen all over the
walls.””> We saw some of the paintings later, in
the village hotel parlor, where they had found their
way after Mr. James H. Bellair’s demise; they were
“buckeyes.” A‘‘buckeye?” Well, when an impa-
tient landlord or an annoying appetite steps in be-
tween an artist and his canvas at a time when the
studioexchequer resembles Mother Hubbard’slittle
cabinet, the artist will frequently dash off an “Alpine
Scene’’or a“‘Cornfield Vista in the Afternoon Glow
of an Autumnal Sunset” and convert the effort at
once into cash sufficient for his immediate needs;
such works of art are known as “‘buckeyes.”’

Iz

THAT FARM

On the right of the hallway was the parlor, back
of that the library, then the dining-room, which
was separated from the kitchen by a butler’s pan-
try, and grocery and china closets. On the second
floor there were eight bedrooms and three in the
servants’ quarters. ‘The interior of the house was
in fairly good condition; the outside, however,
needed considerable repairing and painting, but
with the memory of the other places I had visited
fresh in my mind, I determined to try to rent this
one. I left the matter in the hands of the real
estate agent, and we returned to the city. The
following week I received word from him that the
farm could be had for $100 a month; after some
dickering I leased the place for one year at $80
per month.

[13

CHAPTER II

IN WHICH THE LEASE IS EXTENDED AND ACTUAL
FARMING OPERATIONS BEGUN

T IS an unusual thing for a city man in quest of

a summer home for himself and family to lease

a 400-acre farm for a year,so by way of ex-

planation let me say that for a long time the farm
idea had been in my mind.

I was one of those city men who wanted to go to
the country and start farming, but my ideas dif-
fered in some respects from theirs. The “sum-
mer home”’ feature of it was only the first step in
the direction I had been inclining for years. I
had four growing boys whose welfare, naturally,
was of the greatest importance to me, and I believed
that a few months spent in the country each year
would add very materially totheir education as well
as to their health. Professors and text books train
a young man’s mind, it is true, but farm life is
the foundation of a peculiarly healthy viewpoint.

But in addition to that, farming had always
meant something more to me. I looked upon it

14

THAT FARM

as a business filled with tremendous possibilities,
and in theory J had carefully worked out plans for
their development. Many of my friends had
farms, large and small, but almost without excep-
tion their places were veritable graveyards for
dollars. The soil seemed to produce fairly good
crops of all kinds, but some strange force operated
most industriously and effectively against net
profit. ‘That was the problem that had always
puzzled me, and after years of broken promises to
myself I at last made up my mind to try to solve it.

Being almost entirely a “book farmer,” I soon
learned that a very necessary part of my early
agricultural education was a course in the mistakes
of so-called “practical farmers” and “‘city farmers.”
Like most of the latter class, when they commence
farming, I believed that the farm would supply
my city house with milk, butter, eggs, vegetables,
fruits, broilers, delicious country sausage (I haven’t
the heart to go any farther down the list), etc. In
theory it was a brilliant conception, but in practice
— well, just scratch off everything but one barrel
of potatoes and six well-matured “broilers.”

But, after all, this is to be a history of the work-
ing of my farm, of its failures and its successes,
without any alphabetical arrangement of either;
I shall write of my experiences just as they oc-
curred.

15

THAT FARM

To begin with, I hired an overseer possessed of a
multitude of virtues and a wife, to guide the agri-
cultural end of the farm; they established them-
selves in the best of the three tenant houses. Two
farm hands were employed to assist him. The
old caretaker remained undisturbed in his posi-
tion. They were apparently good men and in-
dustrious, for the place was in very presentable
shape when we moved up in June. It is remark-
able what effect the combination of energy and a
few implements has upon a neglected place — it
is like brushing a boy’s tangled hair.

I bought cattle and poultry to supply our needs,
and two teams of horses for the farm work. The
carriage horses I brought up from the Centre
Street stable. The season was too far advanced
to undertake much farming; in July, however, we
cut about fifty tonsofhay. But, after all, we were
not there for that purpose. We were experiment-
ing, primarily, to find out if those acres held the
secret of summer happiness; if they did not, then
another summer, so far as we were concerned, would
find the tottering old caretaker reigning supreme
once more in the midst of his memories and weeds.

To undertake to set down here a detailed ac-
count of our summer’s experience on the farm would
require too much space, and it would be a digres-
sion from my original purpose. I will say, how-

16

THAT FARM

ever, that if there was a single flaw in the whole
scheme | have yet to find it out. Our sun-tanned,
voracious boys were sufficient endorsement of the
step we had taken.

Of course, it was a new experience for us all and
another year might find the novelty somewhat worn
off and the enthusiasm less riotous, particularly
with the boys. After our return to the city in
October, however, my wife and I, after a thorough
analysis of the summer’s experiment, concluded
we had made no mistake. During my early years
of theoretical farming in my library I doubt if my
wife was very much in sympathy with me; if she
was she carefully concealed it; but toward the
last she seemed to have become infected in a small
way with the enthusiasm that had worked so
thoroughly into my system. To the average city
woman the social position of a farmer’s wife is not
an enviable one. They see her as Millet pictured
her in ‘‘The Gleaners,” or, perhaps, as a “‘ Maud
Muller,” bare ankled in a hot timothy field, tor-
tured by bumblebees and work. As a rule they
fail to appreciate the other side of it until they
try it.

In this farm in the foothills we had apparently
found an ideal summering place, so I turned my
attention to the farming side of it. The first ob-
stacle was the one-year lease; it might limit the

17

THAT FARM |

duration of the blissful state we had enjoyed, and
at all events it seriously hampered farm projects.
This latter feature particularly annoyed me, for I
had already found my plans running over the edge
of a year; so in December, under the persuasive in-
fluence of a little added rent, I succeeded in hav-
ing the original lease cancelled and a new one
drawn for five years. That placed mein a position
to carry out some of the plans I had in mind re-
garding the working of the farm.

From 400 acres I could reasonably expect to get
sufficient grain and fodder to support quite a num-
ber of live stock, so I sold the three cows that
were on the place and bought eleven thorough-
bred Holsteins — ten cows and a bull. The milk
could be sold to the factory in the village at a price
that would pay the cost of production; then such
of the increase in the stock as I did not hold for
breeding purposes could be sold for a good price
and would be net profit. I bought eight Berkshire
sows due to farrowin Marchand April, 200 Leghorn
chickens, and another team of work horses. This
comprised our live stock equipment when we com-
menced in March to work a living for them out of
the soil.

I moved the family up in May and it seemed
like a homecoming to us all. During the pre-
vious summer we became pretty well acquainted

' 38

THAT FARM

with the village and its people, and when we re-
turned, the better part of a forenoon was spent in
renewing friendships of the year before. Village
folk, I have noticed, are not given to placing ob-
stacles in the way of friendship; they rather invite
it. Such social lines as they have in Charleston,
or in the Back Bay District, are not stretched
about for the townspeople to trip over, and the
countryman’s standard of “‘blue blood” is in the
tint of its red. ‘The town prospered on its democ-
racy and it was progressive, even to the extent of
a country club.

That country club, by the way, was one of the
chief attractions of the town. Everybody be-
longed to it; initiation fee $5 and annual dues
$5 more. The clubhouse stood on a hilltop com-
manding a view that any club in the world might
well be proud of. The record for the nine-hole
golf course was held by the village baker; he was
too knock-kneed to hope for proficiency in any
other line of sport, but he could certainly play golf
— and make good huckleberry pies. On Saturday
afternoons the village matrons would assemble on
the clubhouse veranda, each with a little fancy
work or some darning, and spend a few delightful
hours plying their needles and gossiping; of course
such a small town could not furnish enough mater-
ial during the week for a whole afternoon’s gos-

19

THAT FARM —

sip, so the needle work helped over the little
depressions in conversation very nicely.

I said everybody belonged to the club, but that
was not entirely correct. There was one man in
the town who found no breath of welcome there.
He had basked in the enjoyment of membership
at one time, but whether or not his resignation had
been voluntary I never knew. He was pro-
prietor of an amusement palace in the village —
a sort of department store of happiness. There
were pool, billiards, bowling (and some said even
cards) for the entertainment of those seeking di-
version, and countless thirst-destroying libations
for arid throats. The place, naturally, came to
be looked upon with disfavor by the women of the
town whose sons wasted their nights there, and the
proprietor became intensely unpopular. One Sat-
urday afternoon he chanced upon the clubhouse
veranda while the sewing ring was in session, and
he was put on trial by the ladies. Each one took
a hack at him, and fimally, Mrs. Mayer;ae
butcher’s wife, who had two sons, and, therefore,
compound wrath, summed up in substance to the
effect that the café king was sorely lacking in
honor and decency, and his morals were rotten.
At that point in the performance he looked smil-
ingly around the irate circle and said: ‘‘Where
the carrion is, there the vultures will gather.” As

20

THAT FARM |

I said, there is no authentic record of the circum-
stances surrounding his resignation from the club.

When we moved up in the spring there were
ninety-five acres seeded down — fifty in corn,
thirty-five in oats, and ten in wheat. Seven hun-
dred pounds of commercial fertilizer to the acre
was drilled in with the corn. We pastured one
of the meadows and our hay crop was less than the
previous year. About the middle of August the
threshing machine paid a visit to our oat field;
from the thirty-five acres we got 700 bushels of
oats. Not so bad, my overseer informed me, con-
sidering the condition of the land. He seemed to
feel that after he had become better acquainted
with the land, the crops would be materially in-
creased. This was reasonable enough. He was
hired for that purpose and I did not propose to
interfere with the working of his practical mind
by offering theoretical suggestions, although at
times I almost had the temerity to do so.

The home feature of the farm was working so
beautifully that I determined to give the com-
mercial side ample time to get into shape. What
matter if the “‘Harrison Whittingham Farm Ac-
count”? showed a debit balance? It would be
wiped out very soon by revenue from the stock
and crops; it was counterbalanced already by the
pleasure the farm had affordedus. Little wonder,

21

THAT FARM

I thought, in a life so comfortable and independent,
that the farmer’s brain cultivates no appreciation
of systematic economies.

I did not then appreciate how much I took for
granted. In my city business I took nothing on
trust; I had to have actual facts and detail figures;
and I wonder, now that I look back on it, just why
I thought that “general impressions’”’ were safe to
work on in farming and not in dry-goods.

22

CHAPTER ITI

IN WHICH I BECOME CONVINCED THAT I MUST BUY
THE FARM

HE attitude of the farm owner toward his
T tenant is peculiar: in most instances the
landlord seems to feel that his one obliga-
tion is to collect the rent. Against the possibility
of having to make necessary repairs he will insert
in the lease a clause providing for the tenant to do
such work as may be required at his own expense,
if he wants it done at all. Tenants do not, as a
rule, find repairs necessary under these conditions,
and the result is that both parties to the contract
suffer. It would be far better for our farms, and
for owners and renters, if the question of upkeep
were given the consideration that it deserves, and
the matter of repairs definitely provided for in the
lease.

There are certain obligations imposed upon a
tenant regarding the payment of rent, and, some-
times, a weak-kneed reference to repairs, which is
always ignored, but the one feeble effort to pro-

23

THAT FARM

tect the farm, to keep some life in the soil, is con-
tained in a clause forbidding the removal of
manure from the property. How much better it
would be to have farm leases drawn by competent
farmers, leases wherein the tenant would be com-
pelled to pursue intelligent methods in the con-
duct of his business, rotate his crops, and fertil-
ize properly. It would be no hardship for the
tenant; in reality he would profit by it, and at the
expiration of the lease the owner of the property
would have something more than an exhausted
piece of land and some dilapidated improvements.
City landlords do not abandon improved real
estate to tenants in consideration of so much ren-
tal; why should farm owners do it?

The theory that it is cheaper to rent a farm than
to own it is all wrong. Of course, based upon a
comparison of rental with interest on investment
there is some foundation for the belief, but that is
a very poor way to commence practising economy
in agriculture. Jn the business of farming, as
much as in any other, the first essential to success
is an efficient working plant—that is, highly pro-
ductive soil and practical equipment. Most rent-
able farms contain neither of these requirements
and tenants do not strive to put them there,
whereas on a man’s own property his work is all
done with the idea of permanent betterment. The

24

THAT FARM

first year or two may not be apparently profitable
ones, but in the end how much better off he is than
his neighbor who farms for to-day’s crop without
any idea of to-morrow’s. Justrundownthe mental
list of farms you have seen and compare those
worked by tenants with those operated by owners.

During my two years’ occupancy of the farm
under the new lease I had, at my own expense,
painted the residence and done considerably more
repairing about the property than I probably
would have done had I taken the place solely as
a bread-and-butter proposition. ‘There were a
great many alterations and additions necessary,
however, and, although my lease had three years
yet to run, [ hesitated about makingthem. To re-
pair fences was one thing, but to put up new ones
was quite another. The dairy room was by no
means up to my ideas of sanitation; the hennery
was impractical and inadequate; the equipment
of the cattle barn was serviceable in a way, but
not at all in keeping with up-to-date ideas. In
fact, I began to realize that a great portion of the
plant was susceptible of improvements that would
facilitate the working and economy of the business.’

As I look back upon those days I recall my feel-
ings atthetime. The plans I had so carefully laid
and in which I had a confidence that had grown
into conviction were being rudely altered by act-

25

THAT FARM

ual conditions as I came face to face with them.
Perhaps at that point I might have been tempted
to abandon the very purpose for which I had come
into the country, to cast aside my theories and be-
liefs and join the ranks of those who farm for fun,
charging the cost, as we do with that of our wine
and cigars, to a sort of “Necessary Ignorance
Account.” Perhaps, after all, every other city
man who has started farming has felt as I did be-
fore taking the step, and, like the one who imagines
he has a system to beat the game at Monte Carlo,
finds enlightenment only in actual play. But I
had come to learn, and if I found that farm failures
were due to ungovernable circumstances I would,
at least, have accomplished something. The re-
sults of the farm work had not come up to my
expectations, and I was satisfied that the reason for
it lay inthe management. My idea of farm possi-
bilities was not changed, but the importance of
farm management was rapidly growing on me.
My early impression had been that farming con-
sisted of one part farmer and about nine parts na-
ture, but I began to see that my ratio was wrong.
Dilapidated fences, an unsanitary dairy, an im-
practical hennery, etc., etc., were no part of good
management, yet I was undertaking to conduct
the business successfully in the face of it.

I was walking about the place one evening,

26

THAT FARM

thinking matters over, when I met the old care-
taker returning from his usual round of the build-
ings. Just when his position as watchman began
I never knew. Perhaps it dated from the begin-
ning, but he stuck to it religiously, and each even-
ing with unerring regularity he went through all of
the buildings and inspected everything before
smoking his last pipe of tobacco in the twilight on
the little porch in front of his cottage. I had taken
quite a fancy to old Layton Davidson. He was
naturally an original and interesting character, and
had seen a lot of the world in his day and acquired
considerable knowledge in the school of diversified
experience. His opinions were generally worth lis-
tening to. Inthe course of our conversation I said:

‘Layton, what is your opinion of farming as a
business?”’

“‘Well,”’ he replied, “‘there ain’t a heap of money
in it nowadays, because land’s so poor. Where a
man owns his own farm and works it hisself there’s
a tolerable good living in it, but when he pays rent
and hires a lot o’ help, same as you do, and don’t
come on the place ’ceptin’ in summer, why, he’s
bound to do same as all of ’em have done right here
on this farm — stay for a while, then move away.”

“But,” I explained, ‘‘I have a business in the
city that requires only part of my time, so what is
to prevent me from running this farm also?”

27

THAT FARM

““They’ve tried that here. After Mr. Bellair
died, Mr. Baker had the place, then alawyer named
Ford bought it; they used to go to the city morn-
ings and come out nights, but somehow or other
they seemed to lose money at both ends while they
were riding back and forth on the train.”

There was a lot of wisdom in what old Layton
said, although I differed with him in some particu-
lars. ‘‘Poor land” I considered no more excuse
for failure on a farm than a leaky roof would be on
a boot and shoe factory, and “hiring a lot o’ help”
I thought necessary where there was work to be
done — and there is plenty of it on a farm. But
“‘where a man owns his own farm and works it
hisself’’ — there was the secret of success in a nut-
shell. I had weighed too lightly the importance
of the business side of agriculture, but I was rapidly
awakening to an appreciation of the necessity of it.
My short experience had convinced me that it was
an occupation made up of a great number of de-
tails, each bearing important relation to the other.
How little it differed, after all, in the process of
operation from the very dry-goods business in
which I was engaged! The meadows, cornfields,
poultry plant, and dairy occupied the same rela-
tive positions on the farm that the notion, dress-
goods, and millinery departments bore in my city
business, each separate and distinct, but dove-

28

THAT FARM

tailed one into the other and contributing to the
general welfare of the enterprise. ‘There was this
difference, however: the farm produced, while the
city plant was only a distributing agency. The
meadows, cornfields, dairy, etc., were factories as
well as salesrooms, and everything that passed out
of the farm gateway to be sold was a necessity of
life. Hard work and plenty of it, long hours and
careful application, an untiring war against ob-
stacles, all these had entered into the upbuilding of
a successful dry-goods business, and I was con-
vinced that they were to be just as essential in the
creation of a practical farm.

There was only one solution of the problem and
that was to buy the farm, or at all events that was
what I successfully tried to convince myself, be-
cause I wanted the place, so I concluded to take up
the question of purchase at the first opportunity.
It was a big step, I realized — bigger than any I
had ever taken before. It meant the investment
not only of money but of life interest in the soil.
It meant the sundering of the first of the old city
ties. I had no doubt that my friends would think
me a fool, but pigs and potatoes were fast becom-
ing more important to me than dry-goods.

I paid my rent every three months to the real
estate agent in the village; in fact, I had never seen
the owner of the property. When the rent for the

29

THAT FARM

September quarter fell due I called at the real
estate man’s office instead of mailing the check, for
I wanted to find out something about the possi-
bility of acquiring the place.

Following an ancient custom that is still reli-
giously observed by real estate men, particularly
in the rural districts, that good man gave me an
elaborate detailed history of the property before
getting to the point in which I was interested.
Mr. James H. Bellair, it appeared, had been given
to “‘kicking over the traces” in the city, so his
father bought the farm and established his son
there, hoping to tone him down. The experiment
did not work out, however, as the elder Bellair had
hoped. The son soon had the twenty box stalls
filled with horses with “‘marks,” and the Saturday
matinee races grew very popular. The young man’s
exuberance of spirit disturbed the traditions and
the sleep of the villagers, and his dinners at
‘“‘Peaceable Hill,’ which was the name he gave his
farm, left no remembrances to harmonize with the
name. ‘The toning down was finally accomplished
by the local undertaker. Through tragedies and
romances and comedies I[ sat a patient listener,
only to find out in the end that the real estate man
could not give me the information I was after.

Through my agent in the city I found out that
the coffee merchant had paid $5,000 in cash for the

30

THAT FARM

property, assumed a mortgage of $10,000 at 5 per
cent., traded in a small place in Delaware, and was
to make the final payment of $15,000 on Decem-
ber Ist following. The $10,000 mortgage had
been standing for fifteen years with a savings bank;
it could be taken up at any time. My landlord
asked $50,000 for the farm. The difference be-
tween the asking price and the taking price is as
wide in a real estate transaction as in a horse trade.
The place was for sale — that was the information
I was after — so I had my agent advise the coffee
merchant that I was not interested in the farm at
his price — that, I found, being the usual way of
opening real estate negotiations. Shortly after-
ward I learned that the former owner of the place
had used the $15,000 payment due him in Decem-
ber as margin in a stock brokerage office, the
brokers had failed, and a third party liquidated the
account. At the time of the failure the account
showed a debit balance of $9,500; in addition to
that sum the third party paid $2,500 and received
an assignment of the claim for $15,000 against the
coffee merchant. If the obligation was paid when
due there was a profit of $3,000 and interest in
the transaction; if it was not — well, that was
the gamble. Mr. Third Party, however, for some
reason (perhaps he had investigated the coffee
business), was trying to get out of his bargain. I

31

THAT FARM

learned that he had tried to dispose of his claim for
$12,500. I offered him that amount for it, but he
refused. Some time later he wrote me that he
would entertain an offer of $14,000. After con-
siderable haggling we met in the middle and the
deal was closed for $13,250.

32

CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH I CLOSE THE DEAL AND START FARMING
OPERATIONS IN EARNEST

HOUGH I had now cleared away some of
the obstacles, I was really no nearer actual
personal ownership of the farm than I was

when negotiations started, so I got on the trail of
the coffee merchant. He was a corpulent, pom-
pous individual who had come east from Chicago
just after the Columbian Exposition. His princi-
pal stock in trade was a tremendous assortment of
deformed ideas that he insisted upon displaying
like a line of wash out of a tenement window.

He talked of proposed railroad improvements that
would cause tremendous increases in values in the
vicinity of the farm; he had inside information that
the next legislature would make a generous appro-
priation for new roads in that section; a trolley line
was to skirt the edge of the property, etc., etc.,
until I was on the point of thanking him for his
generosity in allowing me to occupy so valuable a
property. To lease such a place was concession

a3

THAT FARM

enough, but to ask him to sell it — surely that
would be a terrible insult! But the depressed con-
dition of the market in his pet commodity had
somewhat cracked the veneer of braggadocia in his
make-up, for, notwithstanding all the wonderful
things that had been said, he would shade the origi-
nal price to $40,000 in order to conclude the matter
speedily. I had never “traded” in reality; I had
bought and sold a great deal of property through
my agents, but I had never tried personally to
strike a bargain. Iconciuded to try my hand.

The coffee business had not improved any with
my landlord since I first heard of its unsettled con-
dition from the old caretaker, and December was
only six weeks away. I explained that I wanted
the farm solely as a business proposition, and the
benefit to be derived from the many proposed im-
provements he spoke of was too remote to be con-
sidered. The place was in a badly run-down con-
dition and a great deal of money would have to be
spent on it to bring it up to a point of profitable
productiveness, therefore I could not handicap the
business with too great an investment in the origi-
nal plant. The deal hung fire and I heard nothing
more of it until early in November, when I had a
visit from my landlord. He was anxious to bring
the matter to some definite conclusion and asked
me to make him an offer for the place.

34

THAT FARM

There was a broker in the city at that time who
dealt in old securities. Hewasa tall, thin, bearded
man whose manner and appearance bespoke the
patience that was necessary in the occupation he
had chosen. Sometimes among those dusty certifi-
cates he would find something of value, but I
doubt if he made much of a fortune atit. In going
over the contents of my safe deposit box I gathered
together a number of stocks and bonds that repre-
sented unlucky investments of past years and was
going to turn them over to the “‘specialist in old
securities.” The pile was lying at my elbow when
the coffee merchant entered my office.

I told him that I would assume the incumbrances
on the farm and give him thirty acres of land on
Chesapeake Bay that carried with it an extensive
oyster bed; I had not seen the property for a num-
ber of years and I did not know what condition the
oyster bed was in, but the land was free and clear
and the taxes were paid up. I thought of the se-
curities at my elbow and I added that I would also
give him 500 shares of Guanajuato Mining &
Milling stock; this mine, I understood, was on the
Veta Madre vein, which was the richest silver vein
in the world. To that I would add 100 shares of
Granite Mountain Copper Co., 200 shares of Inter-
national Securities Co., 400 shares of Mill Plain
Electric Light & Power Co., and $5,000 in cash.

35

THAT FARM

Those securities, I explained to him, had cost me a
great deal originally, but I was unable to give him
a present quotation on them.

He shook his head slowly from side to side to in-
form me, no doubt, that my proposition was rest-
ing none too well on his system; then he smilingly
inquired if the securities I had mentioned were
traded in on the Stock Exchange or on the Curb.
After making some memoranda he departed, tell-
ing me that I would hear from him. After re-
peated efforts on his part to get me to inject more
cash into my proposition he finally agreed, late in
November, to accept my offer, and title to the
property was transferred to me.

I can hardly describe the inward glee with which
I pocketed the deed. To all outward appearances
I was the staid dry-goods merchant of High Street;
within I was a small boy with a new sled. But
that was nothing to my exuberance of spirits the
first time I visited the farm after its purchase.
With what cockiness I strode across my brown
acrés, saying, “This is my farm. - [tis my soil)
can make it grow wheat or tares as I choose. I[
shall make it prove my theories.”

We spent the holidays at the farm. I shall never
forget that Christmas — it was the most pleasant
I have ever had. There was about a foot of snow
on the ground and the sleighing was superb. We

36

THAT FARM

drove into the woods on a bobsled and I cut the
Christmas tree; as I recall that tree it was not more
than five or six inches in diameter, but it was a tre-
mendous task to cut it down, for a dry-goods man
is not, as a rule, overcunning with an ax. It was
set up in the “picture gallery” and on it we hung
presents for every one on the place. Into Layton’s
package I slipped a bottle of “Old Bourbon” and
a box of cigars. Besides our own family we had
ten visitors, and for a week or more the farm was
no place for a nervous patient. I turned over the
care of preparing a New Year’s dinner to a city
caterer who came up and provided for the wants
of our own party and thirty invited guests from
neighboring farms.

I always have thought that dinner strained the
roof timbers a little. It was certainly an affair
such as Peaceable Hill had not seen in many a long
day. My cigars, somewhat superior to the local
brand, helped to break down the social barriers,
and my wife did the rest when she sang ‘‘ The Low-
backed Car.” The departing hour was I A. M.,
when old Uncle Tom Stevens, with whom I had
become very chummy, was discovered sound asleep
in his chair.

Before leaving, Uncle Tom expressed his entire
satisfaction and gratitude for the evening’s diver-
sion.

37

THAT FARM

“Now that we’re neighbors,” he said, ‘‘I hope
you en the Missus will come over to see my folks.
Thar ain’t nobody ever stayed on this place long
enough to get acquainted with ’em. Ever since
Bellair’s time it ain’t been nothin’ but move in,
then move out, just in en out, inen out. A loto’
people calls it the hoodoo place, en it does seem
curious that nobody ever madeit pay. You know,
Jim Bellair had one child, ‘Billy Boy’ he called
him, en he died here. Then Jim he took to drinkin’
right smart till directly he lost his mind en finally
died from some sort of brain trouble. The place
was sold while he was sick, en Mrs. Bellair she
moved away in a little while after that. I ain’t
never heard where she went to. Old Layton knows
all about it; get him to tell you some time.”

During that holiday visit I started some of the
necessary improvements about the residence. The
house proper is an important factor in farm life,
and I intended to have mine comfortable. By
summer I had hardwood floors throughout the
house; two additional bathrooms in the main part
of the dwelling, and one in the servants’ quarters.
In the “picture gallery,” which we had used from
the start as a living-room, I built a fireplace which
is a replica of one in the home of an uncle of mine
down on the river below Richmond.

The only obstacle that prevented me from carry-

38

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aie Ady pasq Afiodosd ‘sparqysnosoyy ZUISIeI UL UONILJsIVes UleJIIO v SI IIOYT, “SUTOISTOP] OU],

THAT FARM

ing out my plans for operating the farm had been
removed when I purchased the property, so I
turned my attention to the business side of the
place. Because of the availability of the market,
the production of milk appealed to me from the
start; the factory in the village paid four cents a
quart at that time for milk. The cattle would
average about 5,000 quarts per head annually, or
$200 each; with all charges taken into considera-
tion that was an attractive proposition, so I bought
twenty Holstein cows. Those with the fifteen that
I had on the farm gave me a herd that would earn
about $7,000 a year. I bought only thoroughbred
stock because, to begin with, there is a certain satis-
faction in raising clean bred animals; the cost of
maintenance is no greater than with grades, and,
when properly bred, they are better producers.

These theories I applied not only to the cattle
but to all the live stock. I reserved eight of the
best sows on the place for breeding purposes and
bought six from a Massachusetts breeder; I also
got a new service boar. The demand for pork in
the nearby village was at times oversupplied be-
cause the farmers from the adjacent country all
disposed of their hogs there during the killing sea-
son, but there was an unlimited market in a city of
30,000 inhabitants eight miles away.

After adding extensively to the poultry houses,

39

THAT FARM

I bought 300 more White Leghorns. I put the
chickens in the care of the gardener, an energetic —
young German named Weber. I only raised
vegetables for our own use, so the gardener and
his wife had ample time to devote to the poultry.
I paid the couple $45 a month and supplied them
with fuel and potatoes; they lived in one of the
cottages on the place. When monthly wages were
paid, without board, the local custom was for the
employer to furnish fuel and potatoes.

I had in my employ, when I started, an overseer
at $50 a month; I paid him in addition $12 each
for boarding the four other men employed on the
place. The old caretaker was not on the regular
pay roll; he lived apart from the other men and I
supplied him with what he needed.

The farm and its equipment differed perhaps in
very few particulars from farms that many of you
have owned or now have. No doubt the methods
I employed at the start will sound familiar to you,
so I am going to tell you of some of my early ex-
periences and what they taught me; in the lessons
that I learned perhaps there may be something
you can profit by.

I have made my farm pay, but in doing so I
have had my full share of disagreeable experiences.
Some of them, perhaps, might have discouraged
me but for the fact that I went to the country ex-

40

THAT FARM

pecting to find them. It has been no easy matter
to change the face of 400 acres of abandoned land
from an unprofitable farm intoa payinginstitution.
Timothy does not grow up overnight in place of
weeds, nor wheat and corn and oats flourish where
briars have been, until a lot of time and labor
has been spent upon the soil. Farming is no
child’s pastime, and it is an unfortunate mistake
to get the impression that the business does not
require mental and physical effort in its develop-
ment. So in the succeeding pages, if we seem to
have made the land blossom, bear in mind that we
plowed and harrowed for our harvest, and our
dollars have been coined out of constant effort.

4l

CHAPTER

IN WHICE BUILDING OPERATIONS AND HOG
CHOLERA CLAIM ATTENTION, AND WE
DECIDE TO MAKE THE FARM OUR
HEADQUARTERS

enters into with more pleasure than mak-
ing alterations and improvements to meet
the requirements of his business — or his fancy.
The desire to build seems to come instinctively to
most of us; it manifests itself in a child with his
building blocks, and the boy who has not made
snow houses or thatched roof log cabins in the
woods has missed something in life. It is a pleas-
ure to see new fences take the place of old ones
patched with barbed wire, to see weather-beaten
buildings transformed from eyesores into adorn-
ments by the magic of the painter’s brush. ‘There
is a satisfaction in the knowledge that the elements
no longer come in through defective roofs on the
stock and crops.
In making the alterations at that time in the

42

{he are few things ona farm that a man

ee

The hennery is 150 feet long and 15 feet wide, divided into ten sections

THAT FARM

buildings, I was governed by the ideas I had in
mind concerning the equipment of the farm. In
other words, I had figured out the income from an
acre of corn, a cow, a hen, etc., and arranged my
working plant accordingly. Soin order to provide
suitable accommodations for the 500 chickens on
the place, I doubled the size of the original hennery,
making a building 150 feet long and 15 feet wide,
divided into ten sections; the lower part of each
section was a scratching pen and the upper part
contained the roosts and laying compartments.
A passageway 4 feet wide ran through the entire
length of the building. In front of each section
there was a wired runway 100 feet inlength. Just
west of the hennery was a building that had evi-
dently been built for a tenant house; it contained
five rooms, three on the first floor and two on the
second, and a good cellar. It had been used asa
storeroom for garden tools, and was unfit for occu-
pancy by a tenant, so I used the cellar for an
incubator room; the upstairs afforded splendid
accommodations for the young chicks.

The entire upper part of the cattle barn was a
haymow; the lower part contained thirty-five
swinging stanchions on each side of an aisle 12 feet
wide. I tore out thirty of them and converted
the space which they had occupied into a much-
needed feed room. I put down concrete floors in

43

THAT FARM

place of the clay that had been there, and fixed
iron water troughs between the stanchions for the
cattle to drink from. There was not enough sun-
light or fresh air in the building to suit me, so I
added fifteen windows along the south and east
sides, and put in six ventilators. At one end of
the barn, and accounting for the tremendous
length of the building, was a silo pit 40 feet long,
20 feet wide, and 15 feet deep, covered by a build-
ing the roof of which was 15 feet above the surface
of the pit. I filled in the silo level with the ground
and put ten windows around the sides; it made a
splendid place for young stock during the winter
months: In front of the cattle barn, and con-
nected with it by a covered passageway I5 feet
long, was a stone dairy room 25 feet long and 20
feet wide. In one part of the room was a wooden
trough capable of holding thirty forty-quart milk
cans; it was used for cooling milk, water running
through it by gravity from a spring in the hillside
about 200 feet away. I built in place of the wooden
trough a concrete vat, allowing the water to run
through as before. I changed the outlet pipe from
the vat so that it supplied the iron water buckets
in the cattle barn with the overflow.

After repairing and adding to the piggery I had
twelve farrowing pens and accommodaticns for
100 head of young stock. That building stood

44

THAT FARM

on an elevation at the west side of a twenty-acre
lot that was used for a hog range. A brook that
rose on the farm flowed through the field, and on
the eastern side was about an acre and a half of oak
and chestnut timber that furnished shade for the
animals.

On the north side of the barnyard was a corn
crib that had outlived its usefulness. I tore it
down and built in its place a combined corn crib
and granary; the capacity of the crib was 3,000
bushels, and in the bins opposite 2,500 bushels of
other grains could be stored. Those were the prin-
cipal improvements that I made at that time, but of
course there were fences and little things here and
there that kept the mechanics tinkering until fall.

My plan of farm management then was to pro-
duce milk for the factory, eggs, poultry, pork, hay,
and grain. From the cattle I expected annually
about 5,000 quarts of milkeach;atfourcentsa quart
it would mean $7,000 from the thirty-five head.
The 14 sows I looked to for the production of 165
pigs that would dress 125 pounds apiece; dressed
hogs were worth ro cents a pound at that time, so
I expected about $2,000 from pork. The 500 hens
I thought would earn about $1,000. These figures,
of course, were gross, but I estimated the hay and
grain crops to cover all the farm expenses.

There were 15 acres in rye that had been planted

45

THAT FARM

the previous autumn. In addition there were 10
acres in wheat, 40 acres in oats, and §0 acres in
corn. I pastured 35 acres of meadowland and had
leftir55 acres:

On the first of each month the milk factory paid
the farmers for the milk received from them. In
the spring I noticed a falling off in the amount of
thé check which they sent me. My overseer in-
formed me that the price of milk was fixed by the
factory every three months, and that it varied
from time to time. During the winter months
they paid 4 cents a quart, but in summer the
price went down to go cents for 100 pounds, or
about one and four fifths cents a quart. That
milk, by the way, was shipped into the city, bot-
tled, and sold for g cents a quart. Of course
the cost of producing milk was lowest to the farmer
during the summer months, but the factory made
no reduction in the price of its goods to the city
consumer. Incidentally I learned that they paid
annually, on their common stock, dividends of
from 12 percent. to16 percent. There seemed to
be a necessity for an adjustment of the relations
between the farmer and the milk factory. Al-
though I had no definite plan in mind, I neverthe-
less determined to try to correct that abuse. [
little knew at the time, however, what a fight this
was going to get me into later on.

46

THAT FARM

But to return to the farm: The sows farrowed
during March and April and we had 106 pigs to
carry through for market. They did handsomely
on the twenty-acre range, receiving only one feed
a day. One half of the ration consisted of a by-
product of a cake and cracker factory; this cost
$14.50 a ton, including transportation charges.
The other half was made up of wheat bran, corn-
meal, gluten, shorts, etc., fed, of course, at differ-
ent times.

One day, in the early part of August, I was in the
cattle barn figuring out some plans I had in mind
for the milk business, when Wilkins, the overseer,
came in.

“Mr. Whittingham,” he said, “‘there’s a dead
pig down in the lot, and about a dozen others won’t
eat; I don’t know what ails ’em.”’

We went down to the hog pens and found the
sick pigs buried in the straw coughing or staggering
aimlessly about.

“Wilkins,” I said, “‘you run up to the house and
telephone for the veterinarian to come out here as
quickly as he can.”

After performing an autopsy on the dead pig and
examining the sick ones, the doctor informed me
that the hogs had cholera.

Hog cholera! In all my plans and calculations
that certainly was one thing I had never taken into

47

THAT FARM

consideration. From the day I first felt the spell
of the farm in my bones, through all the years I had
studied failures and worked out more or less prac-
tical means of avoiding them, even after I began to
learn disappointments from experience, never once
did I dream of that deadliest of all farm enemies
that steals in so treacherously to share your profits
— orto wipe them out entirely. Up to that time,
through some strange good fortune, I had escaped
sickness among the stock, there had not been so
much as a case of colic on the place, but my first
lesson was to be a bitter one. The veterinarian
told me that almost every community had a differ-
ent cure for cholera, but in his opinion there was
not one that amounted to anything. There were
some things that could be done, however, to check
It in a way.

So with his help we entered upon the most dis-
agreeable experience I have ever had on the farm.
For ten weeks we fought that destructive disease
in every conceivable manner. We segregated the
infected animals, even keeping apart, as much as
possible, those in different stages of the malady.
The pens were fumigated and scoured and disin-
fected, the hogs were washed in powerful antiseptic
solutions, and the pharmacopeceia seemingly con-
tained no remedy that we did not try.

Wilkins reported to me every morning the devel-

48

THAT FARM

opments of the night before. His usual greeting
was, “Another hog dead this morning.”? One
young Berkshire boar that I prized very highly I
had moved into a building by himself, and for six-
teen days I doctored him. Were I to set down
here a list of the remedies I tried on that pig I be-
lieve the average druggist’s stock would look like a
family medicine case by comparison. After I had
exhausted everything else I tried a famous prescrip-
tion that had worked wonders some years ago
during the cholera epidemic in Vienna, but the
Berkshire boar only turned a delicate violet hue
around the snout and in the flanks. On the morn-
ing of the seventeenth day he turned up his toes.

It was late in September before we finally
checked the disease. I looked over the mortuary
record in my pocket and found that forty-five of
the fifty-one infected hogs had died; the other six
never amounted to anything. The fifty-five that
had escaped infection were marketed in the winter.
Only one of the brood sows was affected by the dis-
ease, but she seemed to recover entirely in a few
days.

I had always considered the hog industry one of
the most profitable branches of farming, but how
could I reasonably expect to continue it with no
known curative or preventive measures to guard
against a repetition of the experience through

49

THAT FARM

which I had passed? Evils that admit of correc-
tion lose much of their hurt, but there is a calami-
tous feeling about an ill that we are powerless to
cope with. I would have stopped breeding hogs
at that time but for a common belief in that lo-
cality that “‘cholera was like lightning, it never
struck twice in the same place.”’ In the absence
of anything better I became a temporary convert
to that superstitious belief.

There was nothing in the manner of planting or
harvesting our crops that would justify the use of
space necessary to tell of it. ‘Those operations
were carried on under the direction of my overseer,
whose knowledge of farming had come down from
his father before him. Perhaps the results of that
year’s work may explain enough.

The thirty-five cows produced 163,800 quarts of
milk during the year; the average price paid by
the factory was two and one half cents a quart.
From the fifty acres of corn we husked 2,500
bushels; fifteen of those fifty acres had been a
“sour cold meadow,” and notwithstanding 750
pounds of fertilizer to the acre the entire piece
yielded only 185 bushels. From the forty acres of
oats we threshed 1,100 bushels; there were fourteen
horses on the place and no oats were sold. Three
hundred bushels of rye and 175 bushels of wheat
were harvested; the rye was ground for the hogs

50

THAT FARM

and the wheat fed to the poultry. The hay crop
from I55 acres was 172 tons; we had thirty-five
tons tosell. The total receipts follow:

163,800 quarts of milk at 23 cents a quart . . $4,095.00
1,800 bushels of corn at 35 centsa bushel . . 640.00
35tonsofhay atfzoaton .. Sapeeniss 700.00
55 dressed hogs at $9.50 a 100 eae UE RS 693 .00
2,500 dozen eggs at 25 centsa dozen ... . 625.00
g00 chickens at 50 cents each. . . .*. . . 150.00
ae calves averaged $5.50 cach . ss we wk S750
2a roe er Gitawiat Siraton. 26 oi ae le os 275.00
ES ei Se OOS ia EO ALU UPR Nn PEN 29 AP to

There were seven men on the farm pay roll,
another having been employed to drive the milk
wagon and tend the hogs; two extra hands were
taken on for a month during haying season, and
two for a month to assist in husking corn. With
the exception of the gardener, the men lived in the
overseer’s cottage where they had their meals.
Their wages and keep, together with the other
farm expenses were as follows:

Seercers ot ScO'a mont.) <)eadti? 1), SB | GOOL08
Gardener and wife at $45 amonth..'... . 540.00
Sage ann0s at $25.4 month cachs)..0 3+. .:. 1,5Q0-00
2 extra hands for two months at $45 each. . . 180.00
Keep of five men at $12 a montheach. .. . 720.00

Feed for cattle, hogs and poultry. . . . . . 1,780.00

51

THAT FARM

Blacksmithing, repairing, and incidentals. . . $ 200.00

Fertilizer NAD ee Pee mre S care) aie oy YE 750.00
Waxes ane insurance: \s."\\. (i, va se ee 440.00
Potal ee! Cee ew ae sete

To have taken into consideration such trifling
items as interest on my investment and deprecia-
tion on $7,700 worth of live stock and implements
would have been observing a rule of accounting
that is religiously ignored by farmers.

It would be folly to say that I was not disap-
pointed in the business side of my venture as far
asithad gone. My specific purpose in going on to
a farm was to conduct it as a business. I believed
that it would pay from the start, operated through
the agency of an overseer to whom I supplied every
instrument he thought necessary to aid him in his
work. In that belief I was wrong, as the dollars-
and-cents results proved. While I had learned a
great deal from observation, my knowledge of
farming was, nevertheless, mostly theoretical. My
intention was to apply my ideas gradually to
the management of the farm until I should have
the entire plant running along lines that I believed
to be correct, but the chagrin I felt at my first
year’s effort somewhat altered my original plans.
I had no intention, however, of advertising “‘for
sale, a fully equipped farm,” nor was I going to

52

SUOIYIURYS SUISUIMS 9Y} SUIMOYS ‘UIYG 9]}1¥d 9Y1 Jo JoUIOD Y

THAT FARM

father a failure; so I argued that there was but one
thing to do.

That was to begin all over and again do as I in-
tended when my farm was only the top of a library
table. JI had found out one thing that most “‘city
farmers” never learn, or if they learnit they conceal
the fact very carefully, and that is that a farm
cannot be profitably conducted through an overseer
when the proprietor is away from the place for seven
months during the year. I would not for an in-
stant reflect upon overseers as a class, because there
are good men among them, honest, sober, and in-
dustrious; I know of one on a pomegranate farm
on the island of Madagascar, and another who suc-
cessfully manages a chicken farm outside of Cochin,
China, but there are some on New York State
farms who have neither wings nor halos.

So I discussed with my wife the new phases of
farm life that had developed since we became ac-
tively engaged in it. With the knowledge of
ownership there had come a marked difference in
her attitude toward the farm; she had always
found keen enjoyment there, but apparently felt a
certain sense of insecurity in tenancy. After we
bought the place, however, she began to show a
lively interest in everything pertaining to it. To-
gether we planned the improvement of her own
_ domain about the house, and the development of

53

THAT FARM

the other acres that held the right or wrong of an
idea that I had nursed into a conviction.

One evening she was laboring with a badly work-
ing fountain pen over a plan for her flower garden;
it was hardly a working drawing, but notwith-
standing the irregularities of draughtsmanship and
the blots, it seemed to mean a lot to her. Of
course we were talking farm. After she had ar-
ranged the flowers in what was supposed to be a
circular bed, she said:

“‘T think it would be a good plan if we went up
to the farm for a day or two every month while
we are living in the city; that would enable you, in
a way, to supervise the workthere. ‘Then perhaps
we could go up somewhat earlier in the spring and
remain later in the fall.”

That was all right as far as it went, but a day
or two each month was hardly time enough to
devote to the management of a 4oo-acre farm. We
tried it for one month, and then I advanced my
forces into the enemy’s country.

“‘How would it do,” I suggested, “to reverse
your plan about going up to the farm once a month?
Why not go up there to live and come down here
onceamonth? My business here does not require
the attention that my business there needs.”

At our time of life such a move as that proposi-
tion involved was not made with the careless aban-

54

THAT FARM

don of gypsies, so for many nights we discussed it
in all its phases. My dry-goods business was in
such shape that an arrangement of that kind was
not at all impractical, and, after all, it was not like
giving up our town home. We finally concluded
to try the experiment; if we should find ourselves
dissatisfied it would be no great task to take a train
back to the city. We arranged to leave old Ellen
Dwyer, who had been our cook for twenty years,
in charge of the Centre Street house; she and her
husband could keep it in readiness for occupancy
on the occasions of our monthly visits to the city.
The country house was completely furnished, so
we had none of the horrors of moving to go through.
We sent the servants up ahead of us to get the house
in shape, and two days later, I remember it was the
16th of January, my wife and I left for the farm.

55

CHAPTER Vi

IN WHICH OLD LAYTON TELLS A HORSE STORY,
AND I BECOME MY OWN FARM BOSS
AND ENGAGE WATERS

HE day after our arrival I told old Layton
fh that we had come to make the farm our
home, that we would live there the year
round, and that I intended to manage the place in
the future myself. I also told him that in working
the farm he could be of a great assistance to me and
I was going to look to him for it. The following
night he came to the front door and asked for me-
When I went out to see him he said:

“‘J reckon you’d better take this key, ’cause I
won’t have no more use fer it.”

We never had any need for the big brass door
key because there was a bolt on the inside of the
door, but we had often spoken of the old man’s
peculiarity in holding on to it. We did not ask
him for it, because we thought that perhaps it was
part of that feeling of ownership he had for the
property which we did not want to destroy. Old

86

THAT FARM

people sometimes get as sensitive as a fox’s ear and
it is not right to hurt their feelings.

It was very cold that night, I remember, and I
brought old Layton into our living-room to rest a
little, for he seemed a bit tired after plodding
through the snow from his cottage up to the house.
I had some Scotch whisky at the time — good
Scotch, the kind that would coax a smile out of a
mummy — and I poured two drinks of it.

From the moment he entered the room Layton
had been busy silently inspecting its contents.
After his eyes had traveled several times over the
furnishings he pointed his gnarled hand to a spot
on the wall where I had hanging Correggio’s
“‘ Soothsayer.”

“Right thar’s where Skewer’s picture used to
be,”’ he said.

“Who was Skewer?”’ I inquired.

““Skewer? Ain’t you never heard of Skewer?”
he answered, with an expression of either pity or
disgust. ‘‘Why, he was one of Mr. Jim Bellair’s
horses.”

“Oh, yes,” I told him, “I have heard something,
in a general way, about the horses and horse races,
from the real estate man who rented me the farm.”

‘“That’s young Haines. I reckon you did hear
something about the horses from him, en about
Mr. Bellair, too, but you didn’t hear nothin’ good,

af

THAT FARM

’cause that family ain’t never missed a chance,
since Mr. Bellair died, o’ blackguardin’ him.”

Up to that time the old man had held his cap and
old hickory stick in his hand, but he rested them on
the floor beside him and continued:

‘““You see it was this-a-way: Old Sandy Haines,
the father o’ this real estate man, was a farmer in
them days, en he was the meanest man in writin’
distance of the town. When Mr. Bellair first
come up here old Sandy sold him a cow thet he
said had been bred four months before en was due
to calve the followin’ October. That cow wa’n’t
goin’ to have no calf, en old Sandy knew it when he
sold her. We found out afterward that she
wouldn’t breed, so Mr. Bellair wanted him to take
her back en give him a sound cow in her place, but.
old Sandy just laughed en said the cow had been
bred as he stated en that was the end of it. Mr.
Bellair, he smiled too, en said all right.

“Now in them days they used to have horse rac-
ing out back o’ townevery Saturday. Most every-
body had a horse or two en they’d have some great
times. ‘Then after a few years they built a half-
mile track en put up a little grand stand side of it
so the women folks could come en see the racin’.
That season sure was a good racin’ year. It was
four years after th’ cow deal, en Mr. Bellair hadn’t
never said a word about it, but old Sandy asked

58

THAT FARM

him once or twice if the cow had calved yet en he’d
sort o’ wink when he’d ask him. Old Sandy hada
five-year-old black mare that was cleanin’ up
everything ’round. We had about ten head that
was in trainin’ en there wa’n’t a one of ’em that
could take a race away from old Haines’s mare.
The best horse we had in the barn was a big rat-
tailed bay geldin’ named Skewer. He had a mark
o’ 184, but it was just about a second en a half too
slow to let him head old Sandy’s black mare.

*“Anyhow, ’bout that time one o’ the churches
in town was tryin’ to get money enough to put ina
new organ. They had enough all but $50, so Mr. ©
Bellair he says to the men in town, ‘We'll just get
up a special race for the Fourth o’ July, $100 entry
fee en $50 more for those that start, the winner to
make up the $50 that’s needed for the church or-
gan.’ Now, old Sandy never gave no money for
anything en he wouldn’t have put up a cent to save
a church from a sheriff’s sale, but he could see some
money in that Fourth o’ July race en he was the
first to enter.

“One day, ’bout a week before the race was to
come off, Mr. Bellair he went away en didn’t come
back till the second o’ July. He come in the back
road one evenin’ drivin’ with another man, en they
was leadin’ a horse back o’ the rig. It was Skewer
as sure’s you’re born, all ’ceptin’ Skewer’s rat tail.

59

THAT FARM

He give me the new horse en said there wasn’t no-
body to tend to him nor even to see him but just
him en me. Next day he come out to the barn
early en we began pullin’ that horse’s tail. Mr.
Bellair he laughed now en then sort o’ quiet to his-
self, but we kept on a pullin’ till that new horse
didn’t have no more tail than Skewer. When we
was through I never see two horses in the world
what looked more alike, all ceptin’ the new horse
had a little white on his off front foot just at the
coronet, but we put some tar on that. When Mr.
Bellair had done foolin’ with the horse he walked
-round him two or three times en then he said to me:
“Layton, this is Skewer. Don’t forget 14.1 (ino
could hear him chucklin’ to hisself as he went back
to the house.

‘“‘T ain’t never been able to see just why it was,
but when the Fourth o’ July came thar wa’n’t but
two starters in that special race, old Sandy Haines’s
Queen o’ Spades en Mr. Bellair’s Skewer. They
was to trot mile heats, best two in three, en the
first one was to start at three o’clock. Skewer had
the rail, en they scored twice ’fore gettin’ away.
There wa’n’t nothin’ between ’em for the first
quarter, en they came past the stand for the first
half with Skewer leading by a short length. At
the turn they was even up. Then Skewer seemed
to tire, for Queen 0’ Spades came up on him en was

60

THAT FARM

more’n a length ahead in the stretch, en she won
the heat by nearly two lengths. There was some-
thing curious ’bout the way that new Skewer horse
moved, just as square as a die, en I kind 0’ thought
he wanted a little more o’ his head than Mr. Bellair
had given him. When they come under the wire
Mr. Bellair was smilin’ same as when we was fixin’
up the new horse’s tail that day. So when old
Sandy’s boy, what’s the real estate man now, says
out loud after the first heat: ‘Three to one that
Queen o’ Spades wins the race,’ I just took $10 of
1t.

‘In the second heat Queen o’ Spades got a little
the best o’ the start, en Skewer trailed in her dust
for nearly three quarters of a mile. Then he come
up side of old Sandy’s cart wheel. When they left
the last quarter pole they was side by side, movin’
like one horse. Sandy must o’ got a little anxious,
for he laid the whip on to his mare, en when he did
she up in the air en broke, en she was galloping
under the wire. The time for the mile was 2.17
flat en old Sandy was frownin’ en looked sort 0’
puzzled.

“They rested up good before the third heat, en
it was after four when they drove out on to the
track. Skewer wouldn’t turn just right, en they
scored four times before they got away. Mr.
Bellair drove away right smart at the jump-off, en

61

THAT FARM

he was leadin’ at the first turn, but old Sandy
brought his mare up en caught him ’fore they’d
got to the quarter. He was settled down to his job
en drivin’ the best that was in him. Queen 0’
Spades come by in the lead the first time round,
with Skewer layin’ right ’longside of his cart.
Sandy didn’t like it neither, ’cause he kept a-look-
in’ sideways at the rat-tail bay en helpin’ his mare
"long all the time. They done the first half in
1.084, en the black mare eased up a bit. Skewer
fell back nearly a length, en opposite the stand
Queen o’ Spades went away again to the three quar-
ter pole, but Skewer was at her flank when they got
there. When they come into the stretch en levelled
out for home the black mare was next the rail en
racin’ like the wind. Then the bay horse come
up alongside till the two men could ’a’ touched
each other. Then Mr. Bellair he yelled out to old
Sandy, ‘I just want to say “fore I leave you, that
that cow hasn’t calved yet.’ Then he give that
bay horse his head a little en come under the wire,
sprinklin’ dust from his cart wheel over old Sandy
Haines en his Queen o’ Spades.

““That’s why that family’s so sore on Mr. Bel-
lair. ’Course, I don’t know ’bout how or not you
can keep grudges up above, but if you can have
"em, Ill bet old Sandy Haines is nursin’ a healthy
one.”

&

THAT FARM

*‘Did the church get its organ?” my wife asked
as Layton got up to leave.

“TI don’t know, ma’am; but Mr. Bellair give ’em
the whole purse.”’

We were soon established in our new home, and
before the log fire in the “picture gallery”? we
again took up our plans for future farm manage-
ment. On the first of February I gave my over-
seer a month’s salary in advance and lethim go. I
had a patent right to his job.

Not the least of the favors of fortune that I have
enjoyed in the country came to me in the man I[
employed to take the place of the overseer. His
name was Frank Waters, and he had been working
for $1.75 a day assisting a “general jobber” in the
village. Originally he had come from Albemarle
County, Va., where, for the first twenty-five years
of his life, he had worked an existence out of a
galled red hillside in the shadow of Monticello.
He was conversant with ordinary farm methods
and understood the care of live stock. I explained
to him my past experience on the place and told
him of my plans for the future. From thenceforth
everything pertaining to the farm was to be di-
rected by me. I did not mean, however, that he
was to be a mere automaton; I expected his hearty
cooperation and would welcome suggestions from
him at any time. His salary and duties regarding

63

THAT FARM

the feeding and care of the other men were the same
as those of his predecessor. He moved into the
overseer’s cottage, with his wife, on the 4th of Feb-
ruary.

The few remaining weeks of winter were spent
in getting things in readiness for the season’s work,
and on the 20th of March we commenced plowing.

I am amused to-day as I look back upon my
rapidly changing point of view. Hitherto the
seasons had meant to me days of inventory, or
changes of style, or closing-out sales. Spring had
simply meant a turning point in the annual busi-
ness cycle. Now it meant plowing. I had pre-
viously thought in terms of yards and gross lots;
now I found myself unconsciously estimating the
acreage in my store and the number of cords in a
carload of cloth. The merchant had become a
farmer; his was the soul of a farmer. He was no
longer at home in the city; he belonged out where
buds were swelling and furrows were being turned.

As the season advanced the fever got into my
blood and I itched to be doing things. The spring
seemed to come on laggard feet. I cannot help
smiling now at my impatience. How little I knew
of the disappointments and vexations and failures
— yes, and the joys and triumphs — that were in
store for me.

64

CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH SPRING PLOWING AND PLANTING, THE
HELP PROBLEM, HORSES, AND WATER SUP—
PLY ABSORB MY ATTENTION

HE fundamental principle of successful
farming is getting from the land the maxi-
mum of production at the minimum of ex-

pense. One who can do that will, as a general
thing, find little difficulty in disposing of his farm
products to the best advantage. In agriculture,
as in any other manufacturing enterprise, the efh-
ciency of the working plant is the first and most
important consideration. The soil is the instru-
ment of production, and from it either directly or
indirectly all farm products are derived; therefore
it is false economy to deny it those things which it
requires in order to perform its function properly.

At least that was my impression when I assumed
active management of my 400 acres. In its con-
dition at that time I could not hope to make the
place a commercial success, because if I worked
every acre and got crops equal to the average in the

05

THAT FARM

neighborhood, the result would be far below my
idea of what constituted a paying farm. Almost
any man can make a living on a farm; in fact most
of them do, but that is about all they make.
When the end of the year comes around they have
paid their bills and, perhaps, have added a couple
of hundred dollars to their bank account, but they
have had their heads through a yoke all year and
pulled hard to do it. Not only has the farmer
labored out of all keeping with the reward he has
received, but his wife and his children have strug-
gled with him. ‘That is why country boys so often
celebrate their twenty-first birthdays by packing
up and leaving for the cities. Possessing only the
meagre education of country schools they succeed,
notwithstanding, in commercial life simply because
of the brutal training received in childhood and
youth on the farm; they suffer the hardships of city
life and overcome them because they know that to
turn back means worse.

I was talking to the president of my bank in the
city one day, and in the course of our conversation
I touched on farming and my future plans regard-
ing it. He told me that he had been raised on a
farm near Collinsville, Ill., and described a sample
vacation day of his boyhood. He arose at four in
the morning, milked ten cows and fed eight calves
before breakfast; then he harnessed a team and

66

THAT FARM

drove a load of milk into the village. On his re-
turn he hoed corn until dinner. From one until
four-thirty in the afternoon more corn hoeing; then
he milked the ten cows again and fed the calves
and work horses. After supper he fed the pigs
and cut up firewood for the following day’s cooking.
And that was on his father’s place, too.

Can you imagine that bank president ever advis-
ing any one to go to the country? Not unless he
was cocained or made to do so at the open end of
a revolver. Yet if his father, and other farmer
fathers, would listen to some of the advice that is
all but rammed down their throats, they would find
that their sons would not be so anxious to desert
them when they are grown, and they would also
find that they would put by about five times as
much money each year as they do now.

Out West they are graduating out of drudgery,
and they are doing it because they graduated from
agricultural schools. Take a trip some time out
into Minnesota or Wisconsin, or down through
Kansas and Oklahoma, and have a little chat with
those farmers. ‘They will ride you around in auto-
mobiles and show you their farms and talk crops
to you, and, perhaps, discuss public affairs also,
because they take a keen interest in them. They
don’t hang their heads in despair out in that coun-
try because they are too busy making money.

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THAT FARM

And all that they have out there, that we have
not got here in the East, is better land. They
have not got our climate, nor our good roads, nor
our railway facilities, nor our markets; in fact they
enjoy comparatively few of the advantages that the
Eastern farmer has and fails to appreciate. And
each year the area of virgin land is diminishing be-
cause what it has to give is taken from it without
return, and the plundering farmer pushes on far-
ther West. ‘Thirty years ago a fertilizer salesman
would have stood no more show of doing business
in the Mississippi Valley than a flannel underwear
agent in the Island of Tahiti; but that rich, black
loam did not reach down to China, its plant foods
were not inexhaustible, and to-day they are fertil-
izing out there. And so it will be with the rest of
that country before many years, because the pio-
neers, the cream gatherers, have long ago reached
the ocean’s edge, and their eyes are already turned
toward the country which, not so very long ago,
they were advised to leave and “‘Go West.”

Soil fertility is the first essential on a farm, and I
determined to restore mine to profitable produc-
tiveness at whatever cost of time and money was
necessary. With that idea in mind I had at the
outset used commercial fertilizer without having
any appreciation of the relation its ingredients bore
to the requirements of the crop for which it was

68

THAT FARM |

used. Results proved that I was wrong, and I de-
termined to adopt other methods.

When plowing commenced I went into the fields
with Waters and we dug small holes here and there
with a spade; we found the surface son from 10 to
12 inches deep over the entire farm, so I had the
plows adjusted to cut a furrow 10 inches in depth.
In the 15-acre field, from which we had harvested
only 185 bushels of corn the previous year, we
found a clay hardpan about 14 inches beneath the
surface. That field was at one of the highest
points on the farm and was naturally well drained,
but notwithstanding that, it remained very cold
and wet until late in the spring; it seemed to me
that the hard-pan prevented the spring rains from
soaking into the ground, so I sent subsoilers along
after the plows to break itup. Ifthat experiment
did not prove effective, then I intended putting in
artificial drains.

On every acre of plowed ground I spread from
30 to 35 bushels of burnt lime and harrowed it in.
The harrowing, in fact, was done very thoroughly
that spring. When my native farm hands had
performed that operation to their satisfaction, I set
them to work to do it to mine. I combed those
220 acres of plowed ground until the soil was as fine
as mustard seed. That work, however, did not
seem to agree with the men, for one evening Waters

69

THAT FARM

came in to inform me that they had “struck” for
an increase in pay “‘ because I was making them do
a lot of extra work.”

I have noticed that farm hands, in making de-
mands of that kind, generally select a time when
they think the exigency of the moment will force
you to accede to their wishes.

I have always tried to deal fairly with the work-
ingman, extending to him the same consideration
that I demanded of him, because all my life I have
been one myself. ‘The man who directs his efforts
from the side of a forge is just as potential a factor
in society*as the man who works at a roll-top desk,
and so long as they do their work conscientiously
and honorably, neither’s position is to be under-
estimated.

I flattered myself, in coming to the country, that
there was, at least, one thing in agriculture that I
knew, that was the labor question. I knew it was
a very troublesome problem, but I was always of
the opinion that the fault was in most cases with
the gfarmer «himself. Farm labor: is, asia mule,
poorly paid and poorly treated. In our neighbor-
hood the prevailing wage is from $18 to $20 a
month, and the men’s quarters are none too good.
So when my men “‘struck” in jobs that paid them
$25 a month, and where they were well fed, and
where they had comfortable rooms and a bath, I

70

THAT FARM

could not see wherein I was called upon to devote
any more study to the question. The labor ques-
tion was just as much a part of my farming busi-
ness as the planting of crops or the marketing of
produce, so I dealt with that feature of it in a way
I thought best for my enterprise. I argued with
the men that they were well paid and had suffered
no increase of work, but they were obdurate, and I
was forced to let them go.

The following day my wife and I went into the
city on our regular monthly visit. I called upon
an employment agency, with which I had done
considerable business, and on the advice of the pro-
prietor selected four Russians to take the places of
the men I had discharged. They were active,
vigorous looking men, and had been farm laborers
in their native country. [I put them on the train
and telephoned Waters to meet them that after-
noon. I made up my mind then and there to hire
no more native labor. Up to that time I had been
very fortunate in keeping men, and IJ thought that
good wages and kind treatment were the solution
of the much-talked-of labor problem in connection
with the farm, but I was mistaken, at least in regard
to the natives. ‘Those four Russians, however, are
still with me, doing their work well, and apparently
contented. I paid them $25 a month each to start
with, and raised that to $30 a month at the end of

71

THAT FARM

the first year of service. ‘Two years later I in-
creased their wages to $35 a month, and I shall con-
tinue to increase their salaries in a similar manner
every two years so longas they remaininmyemploy.

After I shipped my men off to the country that
day I lunched at the club with a couple of brother
dry-goods men and a mutual friend, a contractor,
who was their guest. They all knew of my agri-
cultural experiment, and the result was that we
talked farm through the better part of that entire
meal. ‘Those men loved the country as much as I
did, but they were confined to their desks with
money mania. The contractor had been a race-
horse man, between contracts, until the legislators
purified that sport into unprofitableness. When
the betting rings went out of business the race
tracks closed, and the contractor, like many others,
was left with a stable of horses on his hands.

*“Why don’t you breed some horses up on that
farm of yours?” he said to me.

I told him that I intended to do so just as soon as
I could find time to look around and get a good
thoroughbred stallion.

‘“‘T’ll send you a horse,” he said, “‘that you can
breed from. I won’t give him to you, but you can
have the use of him. I'll only want him in case
racing comes back, but the game looks too dead to
skin just now.”

72

THAT FARM

The following week he shipped me a four-year-
old son of Filigrane. He was a handsome seal-
brown stallion, 16 hands high, and weighed 1,100
pounds. The contractor told me that the horse
had won in purses upward of $70,000, over dis-
tances of from one to four miles. Waters broke
the stallion to harness and he proved a splendid
road horse.

In buying my work horses I had selected mares
because I had in mind breeding them at some fu-
ture time. My own mares, ten in all, were bred to
the new horse, and I gave his services gratuitously
to those farmers who would give me an option on
the weanling colt at $50. ‘Thirty mares were bred
as a result of my offer; they were clean-limbed,
middle-weight work horses, and I thought the cross
would produce a spendid type of hunter. I wish
I could have gotten five times as many colts the
following year as I succeeded in getting.

During the winter I had mapped out a crop plan
that we followed when the planting season com-
menced. In the 50 acres where corn had been we
sowed oats and clover, fertilizing with a mixture of
150 pounds of phosphoric acid and 50 pounds of
nitrate of soda to the acre. We planted soy beans
in the 40 acres that had been used for oats, drilling
in 250 pounds of phosphoric acid and 150 pounds of
muriate of potash to the acre. In the 10¢ acres of

73

THAT FARM

old meadows we planted eight-row flint corn —
that particular brand of corn produced the best
results in our locality — and drilled in 250 pounds
of phosphoric acid and 100 pounds of muriate of
potash to the acre. We ran a weeder across the
rows when the corn was 2 inches high, and again
when it was about 4 inches in height. Fifteen
acres were sown in buckwheat, 5 acres in potatoes,
and 3 in mangels; the buckwheat and mangels were
planted in ground that had been spread with barn-
yard manure; the potatoes were fertilized with a
mixture of nitrate of soda 3 per cent., phosphoric
acid 6 per cent., and sulphate of potash 8 per cent.,
1,000 pounds to the acre. Four acres each of oats
and of sweet corn were sown for soiling, an acre of
each being planted at the same time at weekly
intervals for a month.

In the spring we had trouble with our water sys-
tem. The farm was supplied by a windmill that
raised water from the brook on the 100-acre tract
through a 2-inch pipe to a 6,000-gallon tank near
the barns; from there it was distributed by grav-
ity through the residence and outbuildings. The
windmill seemed to have worn out all at once.
Layton told me that it had been in use for nearly
twenty years and very little had been done to it in
that time. There was another mill on the main
barn that pumped from a 4o-foot well under the

74

THAT FARM

building; the water was very hard, but we used it
for our supply while I had two hydraulic rams in-
stalled in the basement of the old grist mill by the
brook. It was about 150 feet from the windmill,
so I connected the rams on to the windmill pipe.
The rams had a capacity of 2,500 gallons each
daily, and by operating only one at a time we had
an abundance of water.

75

CHAPTER Viit

IN WHICH I DECLARE MY INDEPENDENCE AS
A DAIRYMAN, AND MRS. WHITTINGHAM
CATCHES THE GARDENING FEVER

milk I came to the conclusion that the milk
factory had exploited that product of my
farm long enough, so I advertised my cattle to be
sold at public auction. I could have disposed of
them at private sale, but I had a purpose in selling
them as I did. I advertised the sale rather exten-
sively, stating at the time that my reason for dis-
continuing the production of milk was because of
the low price of that dairy product. The sale was
well attended, and as the farmers circulated around
among thecattle loverheard this bit of conversation:
“Well, this feller’s got enough of farming.
Guess you'll get his farm pretty soon for whatever
you’ve a mind to give forit. ‘There ain’t no use in
these city fellers trying to farm. Farming’s a
thing you’ve got to get same as a trade; there ain’t
no books can learn it to you.”

76

\ FTER my experience in the production of

THAT FARM

I knew the old chap who was talking; his farm
was about a mile up the road from mine, off to
the left toward Waynesville. Whenever I passed
there I always tried to avoid looking at it because
it was so disorderly. His house stood on a raw
dirt knoll, and half a dozen or more mongrel dogs
were generally lying around on the little front
porch. The front yard did not boast of even the
conventional painted iron pot of geraniums, but it
contained several badly made chicken coops, a lot
of old wagon parts, and a variety of other trash
that had apparently been there for years. From
the front steps an irregular pathway led down to a
gate that hung by one hinge. Generally a thin
pig or two foraged among the débris. His wife,
who looked as though yellow fever would be a va-
cation to her, seemed always to be in the side yard,
like one of God’s forgotten ones, laboring over a
tub of wash.

Such was the condition of the home of the man
who had expressed himself about my early effort
at farming; the rest of his place was in perfect har-
mony with his house and its immediate surround-
ings. He kept some cows and, like nearly all the
others in the community, “‘made milk for the fac-
tory.” I stepped over to where he was standing
with his companions.

“Neighbor,” I said, “I have overheard your

77

THAT FARM!

conversation and, while I believe that you are ab-
solutely sincere in what you have said, you are
nevertheless wrong and I want to correct you. I
have not had enough farming. You will not get
my farm for whatever you want to pay for it.
And there are books than can teach a man to farm;
the best one, by the way, is the book of accounts.
I am selling my cattle because there is no particu-
lar profit in producing milk for which the factory
arbitrarily pays two and a half cents a quart. If
they gave the farmer four cents a quart for his milk
the year round, which is only a fair price, it would
mean an increase of about $50 a year in the earning
capacity of each cow. Now if I succeed in having
the price of milk fixed at four cents a quart will you
agree to pay me, at theendof theyear during which
you have received that price, $5 for each head of
stock in your herd?”

Not only my critical neighbor, but every farmer
atthe sale unhesitatingly agreed to my proposition.
I told them I had a plan in mind to accomplish
that end, and I would take it up with them the
following month. My cattle were sold without
reserve, at an average price of $61.50 apiece.

While investigating the milk question I learned
that the retail trade in the village was supplied by
three separate dairymen who sold Holstein milk at
seven cents a quart. I felt satisfied that there was

78

THAT FARM

a market there for a better article and at a higher
price, so I made up my mind to enter the field; in
fact I determined to do so some time before I held
my auction sale. I was very well equipped for
the business, requiring only a delivery wagon and
quart and pint bottles for the milk. I took Wa-
ters with me on several trips into the adjoining
counties, and at the end of two weeks we had
gathered together thirty grade Guernseys at an
average cost of $65 a head. I paid $200 for a
thoroughbred Guernsey bull three years old, be-
cause I wanted to improve the grade of my cattle.
I think, for ordinary dairy purposes, half-breeds
are good enough, but by mating them with a thor-
oughbred, and breeding their get in turn the same
way, one will soon have a splendid herd of cattle.

I sent in to the city employment agency for a
bright, reliable milk-wagon driver, and they sent
up a young fellow named James Dolan. My first
impressions of him were not the best in the world.
He was about five feet six inches tall, rather solidly
built, and wore a very decided plaid suit of clothes,
patent-leather shoes, red socks, and a green cravat
hung with a new imitation diamond horseshoe pin.
One of his front teeth was a fourteen-carat affair
that drew one’s attention when he smiled. Alto-
gether Mr. Dolan did not seem to fit into the farm
scheme very well, but he was energetic and looked

79

THAT FARM

you in the eye when he talked, and those virtues
covered more than one outfit of loud clothes.
Then, too, he had had experience in the work for
which I wanted him, and that was worth consider-
ing.

I explained to him that I was starting in the re-
tail milk business and that he would be called upon
to do considerable soliciting. His wages would be
$30 a month, and in addition he was to receive 5
per cent. of the gross income from the business.
The milk was to be sold at 8 cents a quart.
For the first month he was to deliver milk in pint
bottles, free of charge, throughout the village. I
advertised my intentions in the local newspaper,
and on June Ist the dairy commenced operations.

If I were asked what branch of farming I con-
sidered the most interesting, perhaps after long
and careful consideration, I would say my cattle
andmy dairy. The business brought me into daily
contact with the village, and the experience that
came with the development added a new charm to
farm life. Moreover, my fight to establish an in-
dependent business furnished the stimulus, if any
were needed, to throw myself whole-heartedly into
the undertaking. ‘The story of this struggle I will
recount later.

My attitude toward the hog industry, that re-
sulted from the previous year’s experience with

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THAT FARM

cholera, was not shared by the sows on the place.
They were more industrious than ever, and we had
II2 pigs scampering over the hog range. It wasa
foolhardy thing, I thought, to undertake to raise
them under the circumstances, but I reconciled
myself to my folly in the knowledge that there were
no protective steps I could take. I gave instruc-
tions regarding the sanitation of the quarters, and
ordered lime, salt, and charcoal kept available for
the animals at all times. Then I quietly waited
for the first ‘‘dead hog” report. It came in July,
but it was due to the kick of a work horse that had
accidentally gotten into the hog lot, and not to chol-
era. There was not a shiver or a cough among
those hogs that season, but my fear of disease was
not allayed in the least.

That year I added Barred Plymouth Rocks and
Columbian Wyandottes to the poultry department.
I wanted to raise the three breeds, one for eggs and
the other two for broilers, so instead of hatching
only White Leghorns as I had done the previous
year, I put 1,000 Plymouth Rock and Columbian
Wyandotte eggs into the incubators in February.
We got 610 chicks from that hatch, and 2,100
from the subsequent hatchings of Leghorns. Weber
put up a stove in the five-room building that we
used for an incubator and brooder house. He made
small hovers to hold 50 chicks apiece, and arranged

SI

THAT FARM

them in the rooms so that the sunlight could reach
them. Those hovers were very simple in their
construction; they were 3 feet wide, 5 feet long,
and 10 inches deep; in one end he built a box lined
with sheepskin, and tacked a strip of cloth along
the front. ‘There was no artificial heat other than
that supplied to the general atmosphere of the
house by the stove on the first floor. The little
chicks did wonderfully well under the care of Weber
and his wife; they fed them finely ground corn
and oatmeal and wheat, mixed to suit themselves.
Fine sand was kept in the pens and fresh water was
always at hand. ‘There was no great cry for fancy
patent foods and automatic brooders, but the birds
and the quarters were kept clean; a good man will
do that instinctively, and the feeding is no magic
art —it is simply a matter of common sense. I
have seen poultry plants equipped with every
modern aid to success, and there are a number of
them, plants stocked with the best birds procurable
and managed by expert poultrymen, but I cannot
say that the results are any better than where a
reasonable amount of intelligence guides the hands
of an energetic country woman. I have always
been of the opinion that eternal vigilance is better
in the poultry business than all the formulas in exist-
ence.

The busiest place on the farm that spring was

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THAT FARM

my wife’s sacred precinct about the house. She
had a working force of her own consisting of one
Italian day laborer, who came in the morning and
went home in the evening. Under my wife’s di-
rection that Italian was working some wonderful
changes in the home grounds. ‘The plans she had
labored so religiously over with the leaky fountain
pen were serving the purpose for which they were
drawn. I noticed her on several occasions take
them from the pocket of her ruffled apron, study
them for a few moments, and then give some new
order to her lieutenant. She hedged her kingdom
in with gooseberry and raspberry and currant
bushes, gravelled walks led here and there to long
beds and circular ones filled with the most wonder-
ful flowers. Why is it that flowers bloom so well
fora woman? ‘There was an elevation in the north-
east corner of her garden and around it she set out
some rose bushes to screen it in. A little well-
trimmed pathway, with flower beds on either side,
led down into the main walk. One day I noticed
a rather ornamental white bench, about 12 feet in
length, set on the elevation, and a short time later
six hives of bees were established there. The com-
mercial spirit had apparently laid hold of her.

At dinner one evening a few days after the ar-
rival of the bees, she said:

“The carpenter is coming to-morrow to put a

83

THAT FARM

lattice framework around the north and east sides
of the beehives; it will be a shelter against the
winds, and with nasturtiums and honeysuckle, or
perhaps crimson ramblers planted there, the effect
will be very pretty. And, by the way, I think
while he is here I’]] just have him 45

“But,” I interrupted, ‘to-morrow is our day
to go to the city.”

She paused for a moment, then said:

“T really don’t see how I can get away to-
morrow.”

84

CHAPTER IX

IN WHICH THE FIGHT ON THE MILK TRUST IS
WAGED AND WON

HEN we stopped the free distribution of
milk on the last day of June there were
seventy-two customers on the books;

they bought 118 quarts of milk daily.

Perhaps that business may have resulted to some
extent from our bright, cream-colored delivery
wagon that was always conspicuous among its
dingy companions on the village streets, or from
the news articles (for which I paid first-class adver-
tising rates) published each week in the local news-
paper on the subject of milk; but, unless my
twenty-five years’ experience with salesmen were in
vain, I am of the opinion that my retail milk busi-
ness, that has grown to be the most important
feature of my farm and is recognized as one of the
town industries, was founded principally upon the
efforts of my driver, James Dolan. Having only
such education as he had been forced to acquire at
intervals in a public school, but owning an abun-

%

THAT FARM

dance of energy, courage, and diplomacy, he can-
vassed that town in a way that would have been
difficult to improve upon.

From the day that young man put aside the
somewhat picturesque outfit in which he appeared
on my place, and was transplanted into overalls
and jumper, he began to take root in my estima-
tion. He did his work cheerfully and thoroughly,
the dairy room was always kept scrupulously clean,
and every detail of the delivery wagon and team
was carefully looked after. He seemed to appre-
ciate the fact that his interest in the business ex-
tended beyond monthly wages, and he worked
accordingly.

In a community where the copper cent is looked
upon with veneration and respect, it is no light
task to coax its owner into the investment of an
additional penny for quality without any increase
in quantity. I would have experienced no diffi-
culty, after the first week of advertising, in dis-
posing of the entire output of my dairy at the
preydiling’ price of 7 ‘cents a quart... The milk
was clean and wholesome, and richer than that dis-
pensed by the other dairymen; those who tried the
gratuitous pints liked them and were glad to try
more, but when it came to purchasing it at 8
cents a quart, a penny more than they had always
paid, the appreciation of life’s good things was

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THAT FARM

subordinated, in many cases, to an innate respect
for the copper coin of our government. Still, they
were an intelligent people, and what I had written
in the columns of the village paper was not lost
upon them.

The subject of bacteria in milk seemed to offer
to James Dolan a fertile field forargument. There
was a woman in the village, the wife of a locomo-
tive fireman, whoaccepted seven bottlesof free milk,
but refused, notwithstanding, to acquire that com-
modity by purchase from us. Undaunted byhis past
fruitless (or milkless) efforts to convert that good
woman into a customer, James Dolan, armed with
a pint of milk, essayed an eighth attack upon the
incomprehensible obstinacy of the fireman’s wife.

“Well, I’ve brought you another bottle of milk.
This is the last, because we stop giving it away to-
day — to-morrow we start selling it. I’d like to
get you for a customer, but I guess I can’t, because,
as you say, you don’t want to pay the price. Any-
how, there’s one thing more I want to tell you
about milk; I haven’t spoken about it before be-
cause I didn’t like to mention it to a lady, but this
cheap milk you buy is filled with blackteery. Of
course you dunno what that is, like we do what’s
in the business; but, lemme tell you, blackteery is
things just like polliwogs. I dunno just how
many’s in a bottle of milk, but there’s a bunch of

87.

THAT FARM

?em swimmin’ around and when you and the kids
swallow ’em — well, they don’t cause instant death,
but, gee whiz, just think of drinking polliwogs!”

The locomotive fireman’s wife is still a patron of
our dairy.

In starting the retail milk business, selling, as
I did, a comparatively high-priced article, I ex-
pected to find patronage almost entirely among
the better-to-do people in the community; so when
I learned that more than 50 per cent. of the cus-
tomers on the books were working people, I was
particularly pleased at the way my venture was
working out. I kept on advertising, in various
ways, for a year, and the milk business increased
steadily from month to month. The incentive to
work which I had offered James Dolan, in the form
of a percentage of the receipts of the business, was
appreciated; in six months he increased the daily
sales 100 per cent.

I seemed, at last, to have gotten my farming
business started along feasible lines. The farm
practices that I had chosen were adopted after
careful investigation of general conditions, and if
they worked out as I thought and felt they would,
then the commercial side of farming would be no
disappointment to me. The money I had spent
on the place prior to the time I assumed actual per-
sonal management of it was charged off to profit

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THAT FARM

and loss, except, of course, such as had gone into
permanent betterment of the working plant. My
books of account, for example, show no entry of
charge for the flower banked walkways and the
ornamental beehives in my wife’s garden. Nor
have I recorded the cost of the fireplace in our
living-room, before which we have sat so often
and planned a future perhaps beyond our years.
Those things might make a cross-entry for the
happiness they have afforded us, and the commer-
cial side would lose by balance.

When I commenced operations, however, as
“cook and captain too,” I entered the following
charges in my books:

Original cost of farm .. . fe 1 S28.260'00
Improvements and additions to heads nt 440.00
Improvements and additions to piggery. . . 375.00
Improvements and additions to cattle barn. . 1,100.00
Painting and repairing residence and outbuild-

MMM Oh GA edie Sy fai Salil)! A Ay Os 1,214.50
New granary .. . PUY ae eh ah ee 752.00
agerade Guernsey COWS |. 3) sie. G8 1,950.00
Mersey DU.) 3) fel bee) alee es eS 200.00
RCemINs 1) WOrk NOTSes. 4/56 0) a ioedy base, els 1,875.00
WEMECEKSIICE GOW) a el a ear i eek. 280.00
Mebearaiire BOA is!) ghee on tee is 6s 40.00
Chickens . . . a Mew sy =) a 489.60

Farming pM clemente Sate tetitervia tar ss 1,510.40

Total th ot Pid ep enh ao SUING TE pray ier Wl ws) 6 $38,476.50

THAT FARM

I had some money in my new enterprise, but
I could see where, under ordinary circumstances,
I would get good interest on my investment.

There was no new territory into which the prod-
ucts of my plant had to be introduced by expen-
sive salesmen; no competition to gnaw the reward
out of effort. The market was at my gateway,
reaching out for what I chose to give. I often re-
called the time when my partner and I each put
$1,000 — our all—jinto the dry-goods business.
We accepted goods from the manufacturer at his
price, and then engaged in a battle royal to dispose
of them. We worked long and hard in those days
and, it is true, we succeeded in a way, but I wonder
what would have been the result if we had applied
that same time and effort toa farm. However, I
was a busy man, well occupied in the new days that
had come to me, and I had little time for retro-
spection. ‘The farm work was progressing beauti-
fully; that spring was an ideal growing season and
the crops were doing wonderfully well, so I con-
cluded to take up the matter of the relations be-
tween the farmers and the milk factory as I had
promised them, and myself, I would do.

When I determined to make an effort to correct
the abuses that the farmers were suffering at the
hands of the milk factory, I had in mind two plans
upon which to work; either would require a plant

go

THAT FARM

in which to operate, so I bought a piece of land in
the village on which there was a long frame build-
ing that had been used for a warehouse. I paid
$8,000 for the property; the sale was considered a
good one. At first I thought of starting a codper-
ative business and operating it along the general
lines followed by the milk factory, but I found
that it involved a tremendous amount of detail and
expense, and the opposition of the factory, in-
trenched as it was, could not be overlooked. Sol
concluded to start a cheese factory myself. |
Without going into tiresome details of the cheese
business, suffice it to say that I learned that cheese
could be produced at a profit from milk purchased
at four cents a quart. The alterations and addi-
tiofis to the warehouse on the property, and the
machinery necessary for the business, would cost
$9,000. A city concern guaranteed to have the
plant in working order in ninety days. ‘These de-
tails I had gone into thoroughly before I took the
matter up with the farmers. I drew up a form of
contract in which I agreed to pay a uniform price
of four cents a quart for milk the year round. For
the first year, however, during which that price
was paid, whether by me or through my instrumen-
tality, the farmer was to pay me one half cent a
quart for all milk sold, the second and third years
he was to receive four cents a quart straight. The

OI

THAT FARM

contract covered three years, and I filed a suitable
bond to insure the fulfilment of my part of it. At
that time there were 220 farmers selling milk to the
factory; of that number 180 signed my contracts,
which became effective on the first of the following
November.

The stock in the milk factory was closely held in
the village, and I was astonished to learn what an
evil influence it was in the community. More
than two hundred farmers in the surrounding
country were nothing more than subjects of that
organization; they engaged in nothing but the pro-
duction of milk for which they were paid only
what the factory saw fit to pay them.

The president of the local bank was the largest
stockholder; his name was Blake. He was a tlfin,
stooped, leathery looking man, icy eyed and sharp
featured, with a very prominent Adam’s apple that
bobbed up and down like a fishing cork when he
talked. His collars were many sizes too large for
him, and in his starched shirt front he wore a dia-
mond that must have made Cecil Rhodes restless
in his tomb on Table Mountain. Needless to say
he was not wholly in sympathy with my new in-
dustry. His attitude toward me was that of a
man concerned only about the time to crush me,
not the manner. Some country bank presidents
have a unique way of building their estimation of

92

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Areururpoid ayy ur posn oiejiem jo Juowaydun ysiy 943 — uoseM AJOATSpP YIIUI [Ieio1 SUT,

THAT FARM

themselves to a great height from which they look
down superciliously upon their urban brethren and
the Treasurer of the United States.

Toward his fellow townsmen he assumed the
role of a public father, or pilot, or protector, or all
of them, and mounted on an undersized, racking
horse, equipped with a Texas saddle, he would ride
around and keep a general supervision over village
interests. He was a vicious, self-centred boss,
and for twenty years he had ruled over the purses
of the workers in the community. Villages out-
side of the reach of his tentacles had progressed,
farm lands had increased in value, and the people
had prospered, but the bank president regulated
business in his principality. He did not want any
too much prosperity to come to the people because
prosperity meant power, and power would tip his
little throne over.

One day I met Mr. Blake in front of the post-
office.

“Well,” he said, ‘“how’s your new scheme com-
ing on?”

“Beautifully,” I told him, “‘we are about ready
to commence work.”

““T suppose you’ll make cheese with holes in it?”

““Oh, yes, but we are only going to sell the cheese;
the market, especially around here, is rather well
supplied with holes.”

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THAT FARM

In going into the manufacture of cheese I had no
intention of remaining in the business for any great
length of time. ‘Through it I saw how a serious
evil in the community could be corrected in an
effective and profitable manner. I had come into
the neighborhood to live; it was my home, and my
interest in its welfare was by no means confined to
the boundaries of my farm. |

During the first month’s operation of the cheese
plant, the milk factory nursed its wrath in silence.
To supply its needs, milk was shipped down from
one of its branches thirty miles up the road; it
worked full force and full time, apparently undis-
turbed by its new competitor. Then it showed its
teeth. Milk inspectors, whose jobs had been
little more than sinecures, suddenly became active
in the neighborhood. Those farmers who had
signed my contracts had their herds and their
buildings subjected to an inspection that was little
short of persecution; some of the most flagrant
cases I threshed out in court, and it served to make
the inspectors more reasonable, but no less indus-
trious in their annoyance of the farmers.

The two feed dealers in the little ring-bossed
village were manikins of the shifty Blake; they be-
gan to discriminate in the extension of credit.
Milk-factory employees, who were patrons of my
dairy, were ordered to choose between my farm

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product and their positions. The corpulent editor
of the village newspaper, who had always smiled
in satisfaction at the sight of my checks for adver-
tising, denied me space in his paper on the plea
that his columns were full. The lights burned late
in the bank president’s office, and old Blake put
the dead sign on certain paper that his institution
was carrying. His leathery face drew into a sinis-
ter frown, the bushy eyebrows contracted over his
unkind eyes. He stopped speaking to me.

When a man fights you with a smile on his face
look out for him, you may not beat him until you
have killed him; but the man who winces and froths
at the mouth is helping to defeat himself. The
peace and tranquillity of my farm life seemed, for
the moment, somewhat disturbed, but I enjoyed
the fight.

Through John H. Wrenner & Co., a La Salle
Street brokerage house, I bought fifty carloads of
grain on the Chicago Board of Trade. After de-
ducting all charges I was able to sell it to the farm-
ers at $1.50 per ton less than the price asked by the
local feed dealers. I accepted the farmers’ notes
in payment, and I also took over such paper as
Mr. Blake, in his blind rage, had discarded. If I
had been ten years younger at that time I would
have started a bank in the village; there was a
most attractive opening for it just then.

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THAT FARM

But I must skip over the remainder of that quar-
rel with the milk trust, or you may charge me with
straying from the path I have chosen to follow in
my later years, the path that has led me into ideal
happiness. The outcome, however, may be inter-
esting. At the end of its first business year the
cheese factory closed its doors. I turned my con-
tracts over to the milk factory; Mr. Blake repre-
sented the factory in the negotiations. I retained
ownership of the cheese plant with the understand-
ing that I was not to engage in the business so long
as the price of milk was maintained at four cents a
quart: it had formerly been two and a half cents.
My year’s fight with the trust had cost me some
odd dollars here and there, and I had paid good
wages to my employees, but I had secured a living
price for my neighbors, and after deducting all
expenses, including the cost of the factory and
equipment, the books showed a small profit at the
close of business.

96

CHAPTER Xx

IN WHICH I INDULGE IN DIGRESSIONS AND
PERSONALITIES

HE fight with the milk factory was not with-
7 out its amusing incidents. There was a
little fellow in the town by the name of
French who was a stool pigeon for old man Blake.
Jim French was a nervous, ruddy-faced, officious
little man who sizzled about, poking into every
one’s business but his own. At one time in his
life, tradition held, he had been a lawyer, but his
authentic history dated from the time he had mar-
ried a very distinguished literary woman of brains
and means, and with her he came to make our
town his home. For a man of his size little Jim
French had a very extensive variety of shortcom-
ings, the greatest of which was his liking for strong
drinks, a misfortune that would weigh so heavily
on him at times that he would undertake to shake
off the weariness in the gutter with his head pil-
lowed on the curbstone. ‘That was very repellent
to the esthetic tastes of Mrs. French, but she bore

IF

THAT FARM

it very gracefully and financed her mistake in si-
lence. But, after several years, the inevitable
separation occurred, and little Jim, for obvious
reasons, was compelled to curtail his dissipation.
About that time old Blake saw some valuable
traits of character in Jim and he almost adopted
him — but that is another story.

Jim French took upon himself the defence of the
milk factory, and he vented his impotent rage
upon me whenever an opportunity offered. One
day while my oldest son was driving my automo-
bile through the main street, he opened the cut-
out, which was a violation of a village ordinance.
It was a law that few knew of and fewer observed,
but little Jim French promptly had my son arrested
and brought up before “‘ Justice”’ Hitchcock.

The ‘‘Justice’”’ had a little shop in one of the
side streets; he was a nondescript sort of a gen-
eral utility man about town — jack-leg carpenter,
plumber, stone mason, house painter, and heaven
only knew what not. At the time of the arrest he
was working out on my place installing a new laun-
dry stove. He was also very much in arrears in
his account with my dairy, from which he got his
daily supply of milk. At the same time, certain
circumstances had compelled “‘ Justice”? Hitchcock
to ask a favor of Mr. Blake’s bank in the shape of a
ninety-day note for $100, so the arrest placed him

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THAT FARM

in a most embarrassing position. It was too much
for his judicial mind, too much of a strain on his
diplomacy, so he adjourned the hearing until the
following day. Surely he was hard driven. To
discharge my son meant no further recognition
from the bank, and he was going to ask them to
renew that $100 note. To fine the boy — well,
there was that milk bill, and that unfinished job in
the laundry.

Next day, when Jim French had testified to the
heinousness of the offence, and his dramatic evi-
dence had been substantiated by two of his hench-
men, who like little Jim just would talk, whether
or not, because all three had whetted their civic
pride in the hotel bar for some time before “‘court”’
convened, the “Justice,” with the voice and bear-
ing of one reading his own death warrant, looked
appealingly at my son and said: “Three dollars
fine.” ‘Then he beckoned my son over to him and
whispered: “Tell your pa I’ll pay the three dollars
and he can credit me with it on the milk bill.”

A peculiar incident occurred shortly after the
settlement of that affair with the milk factory. I
was inclined to think it had some connection with
it, but I was mistaken; still there was nothing
pleasant about it.

One morning, in going through my mail, I came
across a rather strange letter. If I had been su-

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“THAT FARM

perstitious I might have been inclined to think
there was some foundation for the application of
“hoodoo” to my farm that I had heard many times
since ‘“‘Uncle” Tom Stevens first spoke of it at
that dinner during the Christmas holidays. The
Jetter was a long, disconnected affair from an old
man in the village named Henry Welden, and was
filled with penitence for a piece of dishonesty
nearly forty years old. He was ‘‘about to die,”
and a conscience, quickened as they often are un-
der such circumstances, was making his last days
lively. I was naturally interested in the follow-
ine@ extract from the letter: | *)\.0 2.) Mandeeme
father, after drinking heavily for two years, lost
his mind and died in August, 1880. About a
month before his death Layton Davidson, who is
on your place now, came in and drove me out to
the farm; I was a notary public at the time. Mrs.
Bellair, and a man she said was her brother, wanted
me to take an acknowledgment of the signatures
of Alice G. Bellair and James H. Bellair to a deed
for the farm. James H. Bellair was insane at the
time and down in bed, but I was given $250, so I
attested the signatures and went back to town.
The next week the farm was sold ay
Whether there was any truth in the letter, or in
that part of it pertaining to the title of my farm, I
did not know, but it served to remind me of the

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THAT FARM

laxity in our method of recording deeds. Whena
deed is recorded the original instrument is returned
to the grantee. Now suppose he, knowing that
one of the signatures is a forgery, destroys the doc-
ument, and subsequently the party whose name
has been forged dies, how, in the absence of proof,
is such an irregularity to be corrected?

About a week after the receipt of that letter I
saw in the village paper a notice of the death of
Henry Welden. Perhaps his confession was a com-
fort to him in his last moments, but I must say it
did not please me to any great degree.

These digressions from matters strictly agricul-
tural may appear to be rather apart from the
management of a 400-acre farm, but in reality it
was not. The production of milk for wholesale
became a profitable occupation; strangers came
into the neighborhood to engage in it, and the value
of farm land increased. The milk trust increased
its plant and working force, and outsiders settled
in the village because they found work in the fac-
tory. Ihad no difficulty in disposing of thorough-
bred stock to the farmers who had formerly
bought cheap scrubs. There was an increased de-
mand for grain, and I sold every pound I could
produce on the farm. My retail milk business
increased in the village among the new factory
workers. In other words, a little more for milk

IOI

THAT FARM

enabled the farmer to see a little less unrewarded
toil, and he began to appreciate.

As a business man, a contest with a business
monopoly was somewhat in my line, but that was
not what I came out into the country for. I was
pleased to find myself being accepted as a not un-
important member of the community; being an
outsider is never pleasant for long. Butit was the
rich, brown earth that called me, and it was in
working as earth’s partner that I achieved my
highest satisfaction.

So we will go back to the spring of that year on
the farm, where we left Waters and his family
with the stock and crops. It was our first year of
real farming, and, as old Layton once remarked,
‘there was a heap of stirring about on the place.”

102

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH AN OLD MILL IS REHABILITATED AND
A TRUCK GARDEN DEVELOPED

AVE you ever known the country in spring?

Not the season of the poet’s imagination,

nor his country, but springtime on a work-

ing farm where the warblers are Leghorn and Ply-

mouth Rock hens singing an egg chorus; where

the lowing herd is producing milk worth eight

cents a quart; where the squeal of a pig is the

spring-song of a $20 bill (barring cholera). Spring-

time where 400 acres of impoverished and aban-

doned land begin to respond to the application of

theories you have cherished through a successful
dry-goods career.

When I was a young fellow I had a friend with
whom I often visited; he was the son of ‘“‘Sir”’
Robert Handy who owned a farm at the junction
of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. ‘“‘Sir”
Robert was not a foreign nobleman — he was
the other kind. His title came to him late one
night on the Natural Bridge Road when he was

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THAT FARM

riding out on horseback from St. Louis to his
home. A passer-by called to him in the darkness:
“Is that you, Jim?” and he answered: “‘No sir,
tis I, sir, Robert Handy.”’ From that night on he
was “‘Sir” Robert. Of all the charming features
of that beautiful farm, there was one thing in par-
ticular which made a great impression upon me —
that was the soil. The rich, black loam turned off
the mould-boards of the plows like chocolate, and
such crops as it produced! I remember an ear of
corn he took from his crib one day — it measured
18 inches in length and weighed one and three
quarter pounds. But perhaps you, too, knew that
Missouri bottom land.

That was the soil standard I had in mind when
I began working my acres that had been impov-
erished by centuries of civilization. Of course I
could hardly hope for land like ‘‘Sir” Robert’s out
on the banks of the Missouri, but when I saw re-
sults that spring from my first feeble effort to re-
habilitate the soil, I was exceedingly hopeful.

To me there seemed to be no branch of farming
where science plays so important a part as in the
care of the soil. It involves, of course, a knowl-
edge of chemistry, but the farmer need not neces-
sarily be a chemist; he can have his land ailments
diagnosed and helpful prescriptions furnished by
the agricultural experiment stations. The great

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THAT FARM

trouble is that farmers will not thoroughly awaken
to the importance of those institutions where mis-
takes are not only pointed out, but a means of cor-
recting them is furnished without charge. They
are free schools for the farmer, yet he avoids and
belittles them.

That is, some farmers do; some farmers do not.
The difference between the two is just exactly the
same as in any other instance where ignorant
obstinacy and intelligent ambition enter into
comparison. The sooner we grasp the meaning of
scientific farming the better off we will be, for we
must come to it. The day is almost gone when a
man can scratch the surface soil, plant his seed,
and harvest a crop that will pay. In fact, the day
has already passed here in the East, because the soil
has been robbed of the essential elements necessary
for the proper growth and development of crops.
Those elements don’t come back into the soil of
their own accord; they must be put there. It
takes a little time and a lot of work, but when they
are back, and the proper care is exercised to keep
them there, then the word ‘‘abandoned” will no
longer be used in connection with Eastern farms.
So don’t laugh at the “‘book farmer” who has been
through a course at an agricultural school; better
listen to him, for his is the true religion of the
fields. It was necessary to drown a number of

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THAT FARM

people, on one occasion, before they finally appre-
ciated the truth of Noah’s sermons, but that need
not discourage the Department of Agriculture.

I have made a lot of mistakes on my farm and,
in fact, am still making them; some things have
required many changes in their development and
improvement, and no doubt more will come, but
one thing I believe I did right at the outset, that
was the percentage-of-profit basis upon which I
set my men to work. A good farm worker must
have a certain amount of intelligence, and with
that intelligence, quite naturally, there is an am-
bition for something more than ordinary farm
wages, and the result is that good men are forever
leaving the farms.

I am speaking from personal experience. ‘There
may be any number of adverse opinions on the sub-
ject, backed by actual experience, and I would not
dispute them, but I have watched the experiment
on my farm from the beginning as carefully as any
other branch of the business, and I am satisfied
that the money I pay out in the form of 5 per cent.
commissions is one of the best investments I make.

By way of illustration let me cite one instance:
During my first year on the farm, when I had an
overseer working on salary alone, the “‘incidentals
and repairs’”’ at the harness maker’s amounted to
$54.50. Since Frank Waters came into my em-

106

THAT FARM

ploy, on a salary and commission basis, the bill at .
the same shop has been $6.75. Waters is no ex-
traordinary man; he has no special gift from God.
The same interest and economy is practised in the
dairy by a man I drew out of an employment
agency grab-bag. James Dolan is not sui generis;
there are plenty more like him looking for a job
with an opportunity in it, although they may not
each possess so prominent a gold tooth nor such
ready wit.

One day I had the men spreading nitrate of soda
and acid phosphate on the meadows. Waters
walked back to the house with me and on the way
he said:

“Mr. Whittingham, we ought to have a vege-
table garden this spring, a good sized one, and sell
vegetables in the town.”

“Do you mean to sell to the butchers and green-
grocers,” I asked, ‘‘or to open a market of our
own?”

““No, sir, I think we could supply every one of
.the dairy customers with vegetables and eggs at
retail prices.”

That was one of my pet schemes, for when it is
properly done it is a wonderfully profitable farm
practice, especially where the produce can be sold
directly to the consumer. Where one must sell to
the marketmen it hardly pays to do market gar-

107

THAT FARM

dening on a small scale, because the dealers reserve
too much of the profit for themselves. ‘The margin
of profit in vegetables for the green groceryman
is surprisingly large in some cases, running as high
as 600 per cent.! But my plan extended beyond
the dairy customers and the village, into the city
where I successfully carried it later on; it was grati-
fying, however, to have the suggestion come from
Frank Waters, so we took it up with the gardener.

Weber’s vocation was gardening. He enthused
over the new project and the 5 per cent. interest
that went with it. A poultry plant and a vege-
table garden work very well together on a farm —
there is a lot of unsalable truck that can ‘be fed
advantageously to the chickens. Just south of
the hennery there was a piece of land well suited
for a garden; it contained about four acres and was
apparently in good condition. I told Weber to
start his garden there. He laid it out so as to do
as much work as possible with a horse, and it proved
a very good plan. Hand labor should be avoided
on a farm wherever practicable, because it means
a pay roll, and the pay roll wears day and night
on profits. Weber and his wife recognized no
union hours in their work; they were going from
daylight until dark, and in a short time had an
excellent garden under way. They planted sweet
corn, cabbage, onions, beets, and such other vege-

108

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an es
my 3

THAT FARM

tables as could be readily disposed of in the local
market. No attempt was made to raise early
vegetables until the following year, when we were
better equipped for that purpose.

After the crops are planted in the spring, there
comes a period during the growing season when
one can turn his attention profitably to other im-
portant matters on the farm. I had a number of
things in reserve for a threatened idle hour, so one
day, when the men were cultivating corn, I took
Waters and Layton with me to inspect the old mill.
Layton, in reality, trailed along unbidden at Wa-
ter’s side. Waters was very good to the old man.
He trimmed his hair and beard, brought him to-
bacco of a brand that he liked (which really meant
much, for Layton’s two remaining teeth were de-
cidedly out of gear), had Mrs. Waters keep his
clothing in good repair, and did many other little
things that served to make the last part of the
way less bumpy. The old man was grateful and
he leaned on the friendship of the big, good-hearted
overseer.

The mill was not as antiquated as I had sup-
posed. The building contained two stories and a
basement. In one end there was the relic of a
sawmill, and in the basement some few remaining
parts of a once good cider press. Various other
parts of machinery were lying about, all of which

109

THAT FARM

were more or less useless. On the main floor, in
the centre of the building, there was a grinding
mill, a corn-cob crusher, and a large corn sheller.
The grinding mill needed only a new plate inside
to put it in working order; it had a capacity of two
tons of meala day. The other two machines were
in fairly good condition. Originally, power had
been supplied by an overshot wheel, but Layton
informed us that when the lawyer, Ford, owned
the property he discarded it and put in the 60-
horsepower turbine we found there. The wheel
was in good condition, but the pit in which it re-
volved needed considerable repairing. At odd
times during the summer Waters worked on the
mill, and by fall he had it in shape for use.

That mill has turned out to be a valuable asset
of the farm. It grinds most of the feed for my
stock, and a great many tons that are sold each
year to my neighbors; it furnishes buckwheat and
rye flour and corn meal for our table use; it saws
fuel wood for my tenants; and it spins a dynamo
that supplies my house and outbuildings with
electricity for lighting and power purposes.

Free power is a very valuable asset on a farm,
especially when it is always available as it was in
that water mill. In addition to enabling me to
feed all my grain ground, it also insured pure un-
adulteratedfeed. This last consideration is one that

110

THAT FARM

must not be lost sight of, because it is very clearly
_ reflected in profit and loss.

I was down in Leesburg, Virginia, a few years
ago, and I inspected a number of farms in that
beautiful country. Most of the farmers “fattened
a few steers.”” On two farms not more than a
quarter of a mile apart there was a marked differ-
ence between the appearance of the stock. The
ration fed was about the same, yet on one place
the steers gained three quarters of a pound a day,
while on the other the daily gain was nearly one
and a half pounds. In the first case the stock
were fed some brand of ground feed from a Minne-
apolis mill; the second lot were fed grain that was
grown and ground on the farm.

The day we went to inspect the mill Layton not
only explained its workings to us in detail, but he
also gave us a complete history of it. All old mills
have a history of some kind attached to them, es-
pecially when they are abandoned, and although
we were not particularly interested in that part of
it, we listened to the old man with more or less
patience. There was a small wagon bridge lead-
ing from the road across the mill-pond dam up to
the entrance of the building. In walking over it
Layton stopped long enough to point out a spot
where ‘‘Mr. Jim Bellair en ‘Billy Boy’ used ter
fish for perch.”

III

THAT FARM

The mention of “‘Billy Boy” reminded me again
of the letter I had received at one time from the
conscience-stricken notary public in the village,
and also of Uncle Tom Stevens’s suggestion to have
Layton tell me something about the original owner
of the place and his child. I cared very little one
way or another about authentic history of Mr.
Bellair, but the possibility of a defect in the title
to my farm had occurred to me very often since the
receipt of that letter from Henry Welden, although
I had made no effort to verify its contents. So
that evening, in strolling about the place, I stopped
to chat with old Layton in front of his cottage.

In the course of our conversation I asked him
about “Billy Boy.’ The mention of the name
seemed to carry the old man back to the most im-
portant part of his life. Time stales the physical
man into inactivity, but when the mind tires of
its work it turns back for relief to the memories of
other days, and frolics there in second childhood.
There was very little to the story of Bellair’s child,
but old Layton seemed so willing to talk about
him that I allowed him to ramble on uninterrupt-
edly.

““Billy Boy,” I learned, was James Bellair’s only
child, and after a short life, replete with interest-
ing incidents (to Layton), he died at the age of
four years.

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THAT FARM

“Everything was all right,”’ the old man said,
“till that little feller died; then the trouble started.
Mr. Bellair was broke up pretty bad fer a spell;
’cause he thought a heap o’ that child. Then he
started drinkin’, en from then on all them things
happened what people in the village tells about
now. There wasn’t no use fer him to get sober,
cause when he did he missed that boy same as the
day he died. You know there wasn’t nothing at
home to comfort Mr. Jim Bellair, ’cause that wife
o’ his wasn’t the right sort o’ woman; no sir, she
wasn’t no good, but he always treated her nice en
polite even when he was drunk.

“Well, sir, that drinkin’ en horse racin’ en bet-
tin’ kept up fer close on to two years. The farm
here just went to the devil, en it was a pity, cause
there wasn’t no finer place nowhere then this one.
Then one day he quit drinkin’ all of asudden. He
used to come out to the barn every mornin’ en
him en me would drive off to get his drinks; but
that mornin’ he didn’t come out till near noon, en
the minute I see him I knew he was done for — his
mind was gone. He got worse en worse after that,
en one day I found him out in the barn pullin’ the
little feller’s wagon up en down en laughin’ en talk-
in’ to ‘Billy Boy,’ same as if he was in it.

‘About that time some men I’d never seen be-
fore come en looked over the farm, en the next I

113

“THAT FARM

heard the place had been sold. Mr. Jim was in
bed then, ’cause he’d got so they couldn’t let him
go round none, en I didn’t believe he’d sold his
farm. One evenin’, ’bout this time, they come
down here en said Mr. Bellair wanted to see me,
so | went up to the house. Well, sir, when I went
into that room he was a-layin’ there terrible thin
en weak, but you know his mind had come back
to him same as it used to be. He gimme a bundle
o’ little things o’ ‘Billy Boy’s’, a dress en a pair 0’
shoes en some things the little feller used to play
with, en said to keep ’em, ’cause he said he was
thinkin’ o’ goin’ away soon en he didn’t want
nothin’ to happen to ’em. *Iwasn’t more’n a
week from then that he was dead.”

‘““Was any one here except his wife when he died ?”
I asked.

“Yes,” he said, ‘‘there was a brother o’ Mrs.
Bellair here. Leastways, she said he was her
brother; I never seen him before.”

“Did you ever know a man named Welden —
Henry Welden?”’

‘Sure I knew him. He died here *bout a year
orsoago. He was a real estate man in the village
in them days.”

‘“‘Did he come out here to the farm shortly be-
fore Mr. Bellair’s death?”

“Yes, Mrs. Bellair’s brother says to me one day

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that I should go in en get Henry Welden, en I
drove in, but he was away. I remember it was
the Fourth o’ July, en he’d gone fishin’. So I
drove in the next evenin’ en brought him out here,
en he stayed for a while en I carried him back to
town again.”

“What has ever become of Mr. Bellair’s people?”
I asked.

“Well,” he answered after puffing thoughtfully
for a moment or two on his pipe, “‘I guess they’re
bout all died out. Mrs. Bellair never had no peo-
ple, cause she was an orphan when Mr. Jim mar-
ried her; he told me so one day; en all his people
are gone, all ’ceptin’ his brother’s daughter. She
married a man in town, en he died en left her with
two children. She lives in a little house just back
o’ the school house en does washin’ fer a livin’.
You know Mr. Bellair’s brother never had nothin’
*ceptin’ what Mr. Jim give him.”

“Thirty years,” I thought, as I walked back to
the house, and I wondered how many times the
“hoodoo farm” had changed hands in that time.

IIS

CHAPTER XII

IN WHICH I CONSIDER THE HEN WHILE CUPID
STEALS INTO OUR KITCHEN

E ENLARGED our poultry plant that
spring. From our previous year’s experi-
ence we learned that our facilities were

inadequate and not entirely practical. It was a
question of cutting down the chickens or increasing
the plant. I had no idea of doing the former,
because I am a great believer inthe hen. You re-
member, years ago out in Kansas, how they ele-
vated the hog when he began prying mortgages
off those Western farms? He deserved the praise
he got, true enough, but why is it that the hen has
never had her true worth proclaimed abroad?
She reminds me of the strap-hanger in the subway
— a hanger-on, but a dividend earner.

I have a friend out in Kansas City, a millionaire
many times over, who told me that his fortune be-
gan in the poultry business. He was a boy on his
father’s farm, and with characteristic Western

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thrift and energy they worked every avenue of
income very thoroughly — too thoroughly at times
to suit the children in the family, but the father
was a great apostle of industry and he believed
that the time to play was when you were too old
towork. Atany rate, he had chickens from which
he derived no small income each year, for eggs and
broilers were high out there at that time, and one
day he sent this boy to “‘set a hen.”’

“The old man gave me fifteen eggs,” my friend
said, in telling me of his birth in the financial world,
“and sent me out to set that hen in the corn crib.
It was a fine, warm day in May, and after I fixed
the nest all up and put the hen on the eggs, I sat
down on the edge of the box and watched her settle
down to business. I wasn’t any too anxious to
get out into the cornfield to cultivate, for, as I re-
member, I had a touch of spring fever. Anyhow,
while I was sitting there watching that old hen
tuck those eggs into place with her beak, I began
to figure. A hen was worth $1. If she hatched
twelve chicks out of the fifteen eggs, that would be
$12 next year, and if those twelve hatched out a
dozen apiece it would be 144 the second year. The
third year there would be 1,728, and at $1 apiece
the fourth year would mean twenty thou

“All of a sudden I heard an awful cackling. I
had dropped off to sleep and fallen over into the

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nest on top of the hen. All but three of the fifteen
eggs were broken, and when the old man came in
to see what was keeping me and found out what
had happened, he gave me a fanning that estab-
lished a record for that section of Missouri. I got
sore about it, my feelings, too, and I ranaway from
home and came to Kansas City. I got a jobina
packing-house, and I’ve been in the business ever
since; so you see I can thank the hen for my start
in life,”

Yet on that man’s place, which covers about an
acre in one of the most fashionable streets in Kan-
sas City, he keeps White Wyandottes — a hundred
of them — and when I asked him if he kept them
for sentimental reasons he said, ‘‘Sentiment be
darned. I keep them because they pay.”

Just east of the hennery there was an orchard,
or, better, the relic of an orchard; apparently it had
received nothing but neglect for a number of years,
and that does not help fruit trees. It covered
about two and a half acres and was an ideal place
for growing chicks. We fenced it in with 5-foot
wire netting, and along the north side built four
long, low colony houses; each house was divided
into twenty sections with small runways attached;
each compartment was capable of accommodating
twenty-five chicks. The young birds were put
into the buildings as soon as they began to feather,

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and when they reached the point when there was
no longer danger from crowding, the runways were
thrown open and the birds were given the freedom
of the orchard.

Out of the previous year’s crop we had reserved
500 Plymouth Rocks for breeding purposes. From
them we hatched 1,945 chicks, and from the Leg-
horns and Columbian Wyandottes 950. ‘The
incubators were started in February and run
until June. Three times a week the poultry houses
were cleaned and disinfected by two of the Rus-
sians, who worked under the scrutinizing eye of
Mrs. Weber.

The last week in June we commenced haying.
We put three mowing-machines in the field.
Waters drove one, Layton another, and, to satisfy
a well-developed curiosity, I drove the third. It
was my first experience, although I did not adver-
tise the fact. It had always been interesting to
me to watch a mowing-machine in the field, but I
found it more so to operate one; there was some-
thing fascinating about that 6-foot blade working
its way through the timothy. After half a dozen
rounds of the meadow, however, the romance of
the harvest field was somewhat dulled, for there
were no shock-absorbers on the machine.

We cut our hay several days earlier that year
than the other farmers in the neighborhood, and

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when weather conditions were favorable we got it
into the mow the same day it was cut. We follow
that practice from year to year, and passing farm-
ers always stop to give us this advice: “‘ You’re
putting that hay away pretty green — she’ll heat
up on you, neighbor.” It does “heat up” — we
want it to — and when we take it out of the mow
in winter there is no better colored hay in the
county than ours.

We finished haying about the middle of July,
and toward the end of the month the oats were in
condition to be cut. One evening, after dinner, I
walked over to examine them. On the way back
James Dolan met me. He held his cap in both his
hands behindhim. His usual straightforward man-
ner had disappeared; he shifted his eyes ner-
vously from the purple hills in the distance to the
timothy stubble in which we were standing.

“Mr. Whittingham, I — er — er — there’s —

99

er

“Let it out, James. Has some one watered the
milk, or kicked a hole in your delivery wagon, or
what?”

“No, sir, it ain’t that; I just wanted — er — to
— you know — to tell you that I’m goin’ to—
ahem — goin’ to get married to Nellie.”

It was as though utterance had absolved him of
a weighty sin. He looked me straight in the eye

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for judgment. Nellie Flannery was my wife’s
housemaid.

“Well, if you have thought the matter over
carefully and are satisfied that you are suited to
each other, I think it is a very wise thing for you to
do. I am a strong believer in people marrying
young. Bachelors and spinsters don’t make the
world, but married people do. I suppose you will
give up your position and go back to the city?”

“Oh, no, sir, not unless you want to fire me.
Gee whiz, if it hadn’t been for my job here I’d ’a’
never thought of tying up with Nellie; if you and
Mrs. Whittingham don’t mind, we’ll keep on work-
in’ same as we’re doin’ now.”

My wife felt toward Nellie Flannery much the
same as I felt toward James Dolan, and a little
thing like matrimony would never cost them their
positions with us.

“When had you thought of getting married?”

“We thought we’d try and pull it off the end of
August if we could.”

‘All right, James; if I can do anything for you
let me know.” |

“Thank you, sir. Good night.”

The oats did not grow very tall that season, but
they headed out better than I expected; the old
cornfield in which they were planted needed more
than one year’s help to boost it into the “‘highly

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THAT FARM

productive” class. That particular piece of land
was known to the neighboring farmers as a field
that ‘‘never did much”’; I made them change their
views about it within the following two years. In
most instances that expression “‘never did much”
should not be applied to the soil, but to the farmer.
We finished reaping our oats early in August.
Mine was the only reaper and binder in the neigh-
borhood, and after our work was finished I sent the
machine around to harvest the crops for other
farmers; only one man went with the reaper, the
farmers furnishing their own labor to stack up the
bundles. We received $2 an acre for the work,
and the machine cut ten acres a day; it was out for
two weeks.

I cut 105 acres of oats that season, exclusive of
my own, and received $210 for the work. The
reaper and binder cost $125. I suggested to Uncle
Tom Stevens that he buy a machine and do as I
had done. He had the horses on his farm and
there was no great amount of work for them to do
at that season of the year. He could more than
pay for his machine the first year, and the follow-
ing years the work would show him a nice profit
for the time spent at it.

““No,”’ he said, “if I do that, like as not there
won’t nobody plant oats that year.”

There is a dull season in every business, and

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THAT FARM

farming is no exception, even though its slow
period lasts for a very short time. In the hot
August days it seems natural to sit down and take
life easy, while the corn grows.

That year, however, a great deal of interest and
activity centred in the approaching nuptials of
James and Nellie. Both were members of the
same faith, and Mrs. Whittingham arranged with
the priest at the church in the village where they
attended services for the performance of the wed-
ding ceremony on the 27th of August, at four in
the afternoon. She had her seamstress make a
very pretty gown for the bride to be, and the vil-
lage tailor shaped a frock coat of mine into the
wedding garb of James Dolan. Mrs. Waters was
matron of honor, and her husband acted as best
man. Nellie Flannery had no relatives nearer
than Sundays Wells, a suburb of Cork, so I gave
the bride away. No cards were required at the
church door, and the edifice was packed to per-
spiration on that August afternoon.

After the ceremony was performed, the bride
and groom made a detour of the village in a hack,
and then returned to the farm, where a dinner was
served on the lawn. As with the other details of
the wedding, my wife allowed nothing to be omit-
ted from that dinner. In addition to all the em-
ployees on the farm, ten of James Dolan’s friends

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from the village were invited to attend. Old Lay-
ton appeared to be particularly pleased and inter-
ested at the entire proceeding. He satin the front
pew in the church and smiled most disrespectfully
when James moulted his celibacy. At the dinner
he was one of the chief merry-makers, in spirit if
notin voice. ‘Toward the end of their feast I went
over to the table and proposed that they all rise
and drink Layton’s toast to the bride. He bent
his head in temporary embarrassment, then raised
his glass toward the bride and said:

““May you live to see your great grandson turn
flip-flops for his youngest son’s children.”

A week later, when the old man stopped to oil
his mowing machine in the buckwheat field I heard
him humming, “‘ Here comes the bride.”

124

CHAPTER XIII

IN WHICH I COME TO KNOW TOM STEVENS AND
BEN HIGHLAND BETTER, AND GET THE FARM
ON A PAYING BASIS

F THE day is a pleasant one and traffic on the
country road is not congested, the farmer you
chance to meet may, if he knows you, stop to

idle away a little time in conversation. He will
talk about little things as a rule—a colt, the
chickens, or the cattle, and generally of some mis-
fortune attending them. Farmers seldom rate
good fortune a blessing because they think it be-
longs in their life; but how they resent disappoint-
ment even though, as is too often the case, it is
born of their blunders. But, after all, the little
things he talks about are the things his life is made
up of, they are really big from his standpoint; and
the apparently simple expression of his views may,
after all, widen our angle of observation, and there
is something in that. Unless you are ina hurry to
catch a train or to keep an important engagement,
it is wise to linger a few moments at his wagon hub

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THAT FARM

or you may be judged unneighborly, and that is a
mortal sin in the country. The average farmer’s
sphere is not a large one; away from his home vil-
lage he is an uncomfortable stranger, and the work-
ings of the outside world are, for the most part,
mysteries which he accepts in silence. So, when
he hails you on the highway and makes you an ac_
complice in his larceny of time, it is because of a
human instinct that craves companionship.

One September afternoon I was driving into the
village when I met old Uncle Tom Stevens on his
way home. His horses needed only a suggestion
to make them stop, for they were laboring with a
ton of feed that was piled on top of the empty milk
cans in his wagon. ‘‘Uncle Tom” was one of the
tax assessors. He was also an ever ready critic of
my farm practices, but my faults seemed to find
forgiveness in the memory of that house-warming
we had the Christmas after I bought my farm; he
has never forgotten that dinner, and apparently
never will.

«Started cuttin’ corn yet?” he inquired after
we had exchanged greetings in no soft Pate tones
of friendship.

‘“Yes, we commenced yesterday morning.”

‘J don’t care nothin’ for that machine you use,
it knocks too many cobs off.”’

“Well,” I said, “‘it is not much trouble to send

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THAT FARM

a wagon along afterward and pick up the few ears
that are knocked off, and you must bear in mind
that with the machine I cut about ten times as
much corn in a day as you do.”

“Yes, that’s all right, I know, but — say, I was
talkin’ to old Blake this mornin’ in the bank.
“Tom,” he says, ‘how you makin’ out with your
assessin’?’ ‘Pretty good,’ says I, ‘we’re about
through.’ ‘I suppose,’ says he, ‘you’ve grasped
the full value of the energy and activity of that city
man up your way who’s goin’ to revolutionize
farmin’ with dry-goods ideas?’ ‘Well,’ says I,
‘I can’t see where the paintin’ and fixin’ what he’s
done to his place adds a sight to its value, and he’s
assessed now fer $25,000, and I don’t know as his
farm would fetch that much at public sale. Them
fellers up on the new State Road, though, appears
to be in a little better shape than they was, so we
jacked ’em up a bit this year. Your brother Henry
was fit to be tied when he found we’d tacked $5,000
on to him.”

*““How’s old Layton gettin’ along?” hecontinued,
after pausing to light his pipe. ‘‘Say, like as not
that old feller would ’a’ starved to death if you
hadn’t come along when you did. He’s got a
nephew over here in Riggsville that done him an
onery trick once. Layton had $1,700 saved up
and that nephew of his’n come along one day and

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THAT FARM

borrowed it off him. He give him a ninety-day
note ferit. That’s close to sixteen years ago and,
durn his skin, you know he ain’t never paid the old
man yet. Layton has that note to this day, carry-
in’ it round in an old pocket-book inside his vest —
it’s worn in three pieces from the old man foldin’
and unfoldin’ it. Hethinks that nephew’s goin’ to
pay him, but he aint! Durn his skin, he’s crooked
as a bed spring, that feller. Well, here comes one
of them automobiles, guess we’ll have to let it by.
Good day. Say, goin’ to have any stalks to sell?”

“Yes, plenty of them. Good-bye.”

I drove on in the September sunshine, better off
for my few minutes’ talk with “Uncle Tom.”

We have grown to be close friends and I am
grateful to him for many an hour that he has made
pleasant for me. In the midst of all my agricul-
tural activity I have managed to steal away occa-
sionally to a neighbor’s dividing fence and chat
with him from the top rail. Tom Stevens is just a
plain old countryman, but he is honest and sincere,
and in my ripening years I find those virtues
fragrant

So long as our conversation is about matters
that do not pertain to farming we drift along in
perfect congeniality, but if by chance I begin to
talk shop we seem to strike conflicting currents at
once. He has told me many a time that I need

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THAT FARM

never hope to make money in the country so long
as I wear a white shirt during the week on the farm;
and if I happen to meet him while I am out for a
horseback ride he will lecture me first about my
riding boots, and “‘pass the time of day” afterward.

I like to drive in the fall, for to me it is the most
enjoyable season of the year. It is harvest time;
the time when there is no longer conjecture, but
~ bushels and pounds to tell the story of the year’s
work. There is an element of chance in husbandry
with which the farmer must contend. Modern
methods, ’tis true, enable the farmer to cope suc-
cessfully with most of the evils that beset his fore-
fathers, but nature still holds some hazards for the
agriculturist, to remind him, perhaps, that the
sweat of his brow is still the price. Science has
taught us to cultivate some of the hurt out of
drought, but when the fields are unremittingly
“sun kissed”? for a month or six weeks during the
summer, granaries don’t bulge in the fall. Nor
can we control the hurricane that levels the stand-
ing crops, and the early frost that sears the corn.
But the drought and the tornado are summer visit-
ors when they do come, and if the corn-harvester
beats the frost, as it generally does, then the farmer
may figure with a reasonable degree of certainty,
for he has gotten his business past the danger point.
With him his work for the year is about completed.

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THAT FARM

He has the satisfaction of knowing that after manu-
facturing his products he does not have to manu-
facture a market for them. The fattened beef,
the bushel of corn, the barrel of potatoes are all
necessary to keep the cities working, to keep them
alive. ‘There was a time when the prices of these
things were so low that there was little in the har-
vest to make the farmer happy, but that day has
gone. I can remember when they used corn for
fuel out in Kansas, and I can also remember hear-
ing the country groan when the corn crop was
800,000,000 bushels short. It is the harvest of the
farmer nowadays that shapes the business course
of the nation.

That is why the fall of the year is so pleasant
tome. Of course there are other things about the
autumn that I might mention — things not wholly
commercial. For example, there is the effect of »
the cool, crisp air on the digestive organs of an ex-
dry-goods man — but perhaps I had better avoid
details of an appetite that makes my youthful
proclivities in that regard seem dyspeptic by com-
parison.

We were ten days cutting our corn; the teams
were changed each day because even with three
horses the corn-harvester is by no means an easy
running machine. The husking was done almost
entirely by outside labor. I gave the contract to

130

INAIOS OUI ATIUTE sIY [Te
poessoid oym ‘ueU DUO 0} UDAIS SEM BUTYSNY UsOd YI JOJ 1D¥IQUOD OYJ,

THAT FARM

one man who pressed all his family and relatives
into service on the work; they husked 5,254 shocks,
for which I paid them at the rate of 8 cents a
shock. Our stock was fed fodder through the
winter, and over and above our own requirements
we had 1,600 shocks which were sold.

Before commencing to plow that fall we covered
the land with muck which we hauled from a ravine
back of the mill. The mill stream ran through
the centre of the ravine, which was very heavily
wooded, and the deposit of decayed leaves and
other vegetable matter there was more than four
feet deep in some places. I have hauled hundreds
of loads of that muck out on to my land since I first
discovered its usefulness; in connection with it I
use raw chemicals for fertilizing.

The cornfields were seeded down in rye and
timothy, except five acres for soiling purposes,
which were seeded with rye and clover. The
meadows were turned under and allowed to remain
through the winter. Wheat was planted where
the potatoes and mangels had been. So much for
fall plowing and planting.

When the last of the corn was husked, we had
8,925 bushels; in addition to that we had 2,275
bushels of oats, 740 bushels of buckwheat, 280
bushels of wheat, and 1,850 bushels of soy beans.
From the five acres of potatoes we got 487 bushels,

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THAT FARM

and the three acres of mangels produced about
thirty tons.

It was a splendid market for grain there among
those cattle men. They all had silos, but scarcely
one raised more than a scant supply of oats
and corn — hardly enough to carry their horses
through the winter. All the grain for the cattle
was bought. I was astonished to learn that the
annual consumption of dried brewery grains alone,
within a radius of six miles of the milk factory,
was 8,000 tons.

I could never quite understand the business
methods of most of the farmers in my neighbor-
hood. Almost without exception they kept cattle
for the purpose of producing milk for the factory.
The average daily milk yield of a cow is 72 quarts,
or 31 cents. The average daily cost of feed is 17
cents. In reckoning the productiveness of a cow I
have taken into consideration milking cows, young
stock, and dry cattle. In arriving at the cost of
feeding I have borne in mind the pasturing season.
My figures are based upon information received
from ten representative farms in the neighborhood,
averaging 133 acres and 42 head of stock. That
gross annual income of $2,146.20 stands against
charges for labor, taxes, insurance, interest, and
living for the farmer and his family. Is it any
wonder that bank balances don’t grow, that

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THAT FARM

drudgery continues, and that the farmer does not
progress?

I do not mean to suggest any criticism of dairy
farming, because it is very interesting and profit-
able when properly conducted, but if the efficiency
of the herd were more carefully looked after, and
the cost of feeding reduced by devoting more
care and acreage to the raising of grain, annual
profits with most dairymen would be increased
about 300 per cent.

There was a good demand for all the ground
feed I could turn out of my mill, so I put in another
grinding machine and started itto work. I found
the cattle did remarkably well on a mixture of corn
and cob meal so per cent., wheat bran 25 per cent.,
and ground soy beans 25 per cent.

_ In November that year dressed pork was selling
at nine and three fourths andtencents. The local
butchers advised me to wait until January or Feb-
ruary before commencing to kill, because they
thought the price would advance further, but ten
cents is an attractive price for pork and I was satis-
fied with it. The butchers were not bad prophets,
however, for the price went to twelve and one half
cents in February. Hog killing is not the most
esthetic operation on a farm, but as David Knapp
and his three mountain-grown sons do the work, it
is at least interesting. I had a nice lot of hogs

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THAT FARM

that season, 120 to be marketed, and Waters
thought they would average about 130 pounds
dressed. We were down in the pens where the
men were getting twenty-five hogs ready for Knapp
and his boys to begin work on.

‘“‘Knapp will be here at seven in the morning,”
Waters said, “‘to start killing. He ought to have
them all cleaned up by Friday. I saw Milligan in
the village, he tells me they are going to have a
chicken fight out here Saturday night; did he say
anything to you about it?”

**A chicken fight? Out where?” I asked.

‘‘In the mill. He tells me they always had
them there up to a few years ago, then they went
over to Palmer’s barn; but now that it’s burned
down they’re coming back here.”

‘Who attends these fights?” I asked.

““There’s a crowd coming over from Dunton, I
understand, with some birds, and then most of the
sports from the village will be there. I hear that
they do some big betting on the chickens.”’

‘“*Doesn’t the sheriff try to stop it?”

‘“‘He never knows anything about it until the
next day, and then what can he do? These fellers
round here don’t seem to think there’s any harm in
cock-fighting; a whole lot of them raises game
chickens.”

“Don’t say a word to any one, Waters, but you

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THAT FARM

and I will attend that chicken fight Saturday
night.”

I try to be public spirited, and I don’t think my
morals are chamois strained, but there are some
things that make me curl up like a cold puppy —
one of them is cock-fighting. I could never find
any excuse for it. That evening, after dinner, I
called “‘Salem 84” on the ’phone.

“Hello, is Mr. Highland there?”

‘Yes, he’s on the phone.”

“Oh, hello, Mr. Sheriff! this is Mr. Whittingham.
I would like very much to have you come out to
dine with me Saturday evening.”

*““Let’s see! I’ve got to go over to Dent’s Bluff
in the afternoon, but I ought to be back by four —
sure, I’d be delighted.”

‘Tf you don’t mind just keep it quiet. [ll drive
in for you about six o’clock. Good-bye.”’

“What on earth do you want the sheriff for?”’
my wife asked.

**Oh, just to look over some cattle with me.”

“Is he a cattle expert?”’ she inquired.

“Yes, in the particular breed I have reference
to,”

Ben Highland was a big, angular, interesting
individual to whom living was, apparently, a real
pleasure. His badge of office never weighed so
heavily on him as to become burdensome, and it

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THAT FARM

was not worn on the lapel of his coat. Of course
he fully appreciated the duties of his position and
he performed them conscientiously, but he had
very little material to work on.

The wisdom of the countryman manifests itself
very forcibly in his aversion to the law and its dis-
astrous entanglements. There is only one ‘‘Mr.
Counsellor” in our town, and while I would not
think of reflecting in any way on his credit, I am
afraid his capital is none too elaborate; his expres-
sion doesn’t indicate it.

Mrs. Whittingham received the sheriff most gra-
ciously, but there was a certain reserve in her man-
ner that came from timidity in the presence of an
officer of the law. She had never been in such
close contact with a sheriff before; in fact, I don’t
think she had ever seen one, and no doubt she ex-
pected to find him bristling with firearms, hand-
cuffs, and leg-irons. But the sheriff was a friend
maker, and my wife’s reserve was short-lived.

““You’ve got a fine place out here, Mrs. Whit-
tingham,” he remarked, as we sat down to dinner;
“how do you like it?”

“Very much, indeed,” she replied.

“I haven’t been out this way,” he continued,
“‘since Weaver lived down on the next farm. You
don’t remember the Weavers? No, of course not,
that was before you came here. Old man Weaver

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THAT FARM

was sick for a long time, and Reverend Horsefield
used to drop in now and then to see him. The dom-
inie was terribly absent-minded. When Weaver
finally died the Reverend Horsefield performed the
burial service over the remains down herein Oak Hill
Cemetery. About a month or two later he hap-
pened along the road and saw Mrs. Weaver at her
gate. He hauled up his horse and leaned out from
under the buggy top. ‘How’s your husband?’ he
asked. ‘Just as you left him,’ the widow replied.
Poor Mrs. Weaver she sort of grew sour on things
generally. She told me one day that she never
saw such a place in her life for people borrowing
things; first it was a wagon, then a horse rake, or a
dump-cart, or a churn, or a few cups and saucers,
till finally her patience gave out one afternoon
when Mrs. Bailey’s little girl came over and said:
‘Mrs. Weaver, mamma says won’t you please lend
her a pie?’ That seemed to be the last straw, for
she moved away not long after. I believe she’s
living out in lowa now with a brother, or like as not
she wished herself dead and her wish came true, for
it wasn’t any fun to her to be alive.

*“You’ve made a lot of changes in the place,”’ he
went on reflectively. “I’m afraid if Jim Bellair
could come back he would hardly recognize his old
home. There was a funny sort of an individual;
to hear about him nowadays you’d think he was

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the most dissolute devil-may-care cuss that ever
lived, but that wasn’t a fact. You know, the only
things that sprout up out of a man’s grave are his
sins; his virtues stay down in the box with him. If
all the people that Jim Bellair helped around this
town would speak up in defence of him, the scandal
mongers wouldn’t be able to get a word in edge-
wise. His father didn’t put him up here on this
farm because he was cutting up too much in the
city. The boy might have had his share of fun in
town, but his father really sent him here because
of his health; some said his lungs were in bad shape,
but I don’t know about that. Everything was all
right with Jim Bellair until he lost his child; then
he went all to pieces.”

I think my wife rather resented it when I took
the sheriff into the library to smoke.

“Sheriff,” I said, ‘‘there is a chicken fight going
on at present in my mill. I understand there is a
crowd there from Dunton, and a number of men
from our own town. Now I don’t care about
having any of them arrested if you can avoid
it, but I do want to try and break up this vicious
sport.”

About nine o’clock we joined Waters and came
up to the mill from the ravine side. ‘The windows
had been carefully curtained with bags and blan-
kets and the light from inside shone here and there

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THAT FARM

through cracks in the siding. A number of horses
and vehicles were tied about under the trees.
While we stood outside I occasionally heard. a
sharp voice squeaking from upstairs: “Fifty on
the Brass Back. Fifty to twenty-five on the Brass
Back.” That voice sounded familiar to me — I
had heard it somewhere before. We went into the
building through the basement and started upstairs.
On the second floor the sheriff tripped over a hic-
kory split bushel basket. There was a moment of
dead silence above, then pandemonium reigned.
It was only a short drop from the second floor to
the ground on the front side of the building, and
through the windows and the large double doorway
most of the ‘“‘sports” escaped. The lights had
been extinguished at the first intimation of danger,
and when we forced open the door everything was
in darkness. Waters struck a match and lighted a
lantern that we found on the floor. There were
three men left in the room who apparently did not
care to risk the second-story window exit; they
were Milligan, the livery stable keeper, Byrne, who
ran the Eastern Café, and my distinguished friend,
Mr. Frederick Blake, president ofthebank. Milli-
gan was not particularly disturbed — I am afraid
that he was not overburdened with respect for the
law anyhow; Byrne laughed (fat men always do);
and Blake gazed straight out ahead over the beams

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‘THAT FARM

from his ponderous diamond; not a word came from
him, but his face was a study.

On the way back to the house the sheriff said:
“I ought to have run them in just for a joke.”
Then, after a long pause: ‘‘I’ll bet old Blake cuts
me on the way home from church to-morrow.”

Chicken fighting is still a popular pastime with
the “‘sporting”’ element in the village, but most of
the meetings, I am told, are held in the vicinity of
Dunton.

I sold all my hay and grain on the farm at $1 a
ton less than the prevailing price in the village for
those things. I could not afford to deliver it for
$1 a ton, and the reduced price enabled me to dis-
pose of it quickly. To a great many farmers it
also meant a saving of a mile and a half in the haul-
ing distance, and they were not slow in appreciating
that fact. By the end of December such prod-
uce as I had to sell had been disposed of and I
closed my books for the year. The farm’s receipts
were as follows:

7,800 bu. corn and cob meal, at $28.50 per ton $ 3,890.25

1,500 bu. soy beans, at $1.95 per bu. adibaatte 2,850.00
2,000 bu. ground oats, at $28.50 perton. . . 1,026.00
135 tous hay, at.624.50 per tony. , .' 3;307.50
120 dressed hogs, 15,840 lbs., at g$c per ootind. 1,544.40
120:hoe plucks:vataoc each / MMe ay iu wa se 48.00
5.040 dozveras. amecc per dow..%7 set vith ist) ee 1,260.00

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THAT FARM
965 dressed chickens, at 5oceach . . . .. 482.50

ao0 bepnorn pullets, at 75c each . . wl. 225.00
Seren icuck . . . ; a a ae 432.50
Reaping 105 acres oats, at ee per acres gaa se 210.00
32 tons straw, at $16.25 perton. . desis ts 520.50
11,360 bundles fodder, at 3c per Eraridle Dy etos 340.80
1,627 lbs. dressed meat, atIScperpound. . . 244.05

7-860 Quarts milk, at Se aquatt ... <2. 4,511.20

Pees enor e ree te tev Psu! oi si dati te Veh OP oy EROS 7O

EXPENDITURES

Wages: 4 Russians, at $25 each per month . §$ 1,200.00
Frank Waters, at so per month . . 2 .. 600.00
fames Doelan: at $30 per month’: . 6...) 360.00
Weber and wife, at $40 permonth . .. . 480.00
Keep of 5menat $12 permontheach. ... 720.00
NRE Peer ei te Fay das ls ng ta ag 687.49
Musking corm . . . pe eaande Uae 420.32
Butchering 120 fie va at ge ouch garg ® LTD 60.00
irene wor iced, at S13 per ton sia 2... 104.00
RMR CeMUVEry WagOn oe ee ie) ee 12500
eam aCIGemials he Bf ie el) es 28.50
ean Tams se). gh 6s: ep a fs Oy, 184.50
ES Ne I ee ae Pees ae 250.00
MMPI ML eas ITY ay tes) Tio eat a Vk Meat eho 325.00
emma Rio gat Le lg My Rraitas lak es oa) “6 145.00
James Dolan’s commission, 5 percent... . 175.56
Charles Weber’s commission, § percent. . . 102.08

Ten per cent. depreciation of $10,226.50 atocks
Sa VOCE NIEME (°/) er ayers fos. s,s a: ea

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THAT FARM

Five per cent. interest on investment of $28,250 15412, 50

$8,402.60
Frank Waters’ commission, § percent. . . . 574-30
Ot acy ce) So fee Gr hc GOR a aie

On New Year’s Day I gave the men checks for
their respective interests in the farm’s profits.

142

CHAPTER XIV

IN WHICH MY SON JUNIOR INTRODUCES US TO A
NEW INDUSTRY — DOGS; AND IN WHICH
THE ANGELS OF BIRTH AND DEATH
VISIT THE FARM

OOR old Layton! Perhaps there is little
in the passing of a worn-out old man that
belongs in the annals of a business farm,

but when death comes among us here in the sun-
shine we feel it more than you do whose lives are
set in the claws of a metropolis, for in the midst of
happiness unknown in the city we look upon life as
a right, and the good and the beautiful are not ob-
scured by a constant thought of the time when we
shall see them no more.

One Saturday, late in January, Waters found
the old man ill. There was nothing in particular
wrong, or right, with him; just a general collapse,
or, as the doctor expressed it, “‘the machinery was
worn out.” For two days the old man wandered
about the world in delirium, sailing the seas in a
merchantman, cutting up high jinks in Chinese

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THAT FARM

ports, trading on the African coast, henchman of
the unfortunate James Bellair in his skyrocket
career, and recipient of the kindness of Frank
Waters. On Monday evening he opened his eyes
and looked about the room; he was tired, too tired
to speak, but he made a feeble effort to offer us his
hand, which we took in turn; then he smiled and
went to sleep.

Among the old fellow’s effects we found the
stained ninety-day note for $1,700, worn into three
pieces just as Uncle Tom Stevens had described it,
and also a small cotton tobacco sack containing
forty-eight cents. During his short illness I had
sent word to such of his relatives as I could locate,
advising them of his condition, but none came to
see him. I turned the sack of small coins over to
the public administrator and explained to him the
circumstances. Then I had published in three
different town papers an account of the death of
Layton Davidson, stating, among other things, the
fact that the public administrator was in possession
of a bag of money that had been found secreted in
the old man’s room.

Just twenty-eight relatives appeared and quar-
reled for the right to do honor to the dead. The
nephew from Riggsville finally convinced the others
that he was the old man’s next of kin. He had the
remains placed in a black cloth coffin that cost

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THAT FARM

$125, the body was taken in a hearse to Riggsville
and, accompanied by six hacks and a number of
other vehicles, was driven to the village cemetery
and decently buried. Then the nephew, grief-
stricken and in mourning, applied to the public
administratorfor the bagofmoney. It was handed
over to him without any tedious formalities of
law.

Coming into the country as I had done, overflow-
ing with commercial ideas about farming, it was
only natural that my early impressions of Layton
Davidson were not the best. He was an old man
when I first saw him, tottering about under the
load of his years, supported by a hickory stick.
He came to me with the farm. Whatever senti-
mental reasons his right of occupancy was based
upon made no particular impression upon me, but
his very helplessness made him secure in his posi-
tion. When we came to know each other better,
however, I found that the old man was by no
means an incubus; he proved a help to me, and I
owe a great deal to his memory. Familiar as he
was with all branches of farming, although I con-
sidered them old-school methods and at the pres-
ent time impractical, I was able to learn some
things from him that I might otherwise have had
to purchase by costly experience. He was a sort
of bell-buoy marking hidden difficulties that I

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THAT FARM

avoided. He was loyal and grateful always, and
whether a man be prince or pauper we regret to
see the ending of a life that has owned those cardi-
nal virtues.

During my several years of farming I had
watched with a great deal of interest, naturally,
the growth and development of my boys. Not-
withstanding that they were the chief cause of my
coming to the country when I did, I have written
nothing about them because there is little worth
recording in the youthful period of the average
boy’s life, and they were only average boys. They
had been through college, two at Yale, one at
Princeton, and the youngest was in Annapolis.
Their holidays had for the most part been spent on
the farm, and whatever impressions they gained
of the life were the result entirely of their own ob-
servation and experience. I gave them every op-
portunity, unhampered both in the matter of their
education and the selection of their vocations,
because they were well-balanced boys. I believe
a man, not driven by necessity, will choose best
for himself in such matters. He will be guided by
the heart as well as the head, and that is the basis
of success in any undertaking.

The youngest boy had been a sailor from child-
hood — the navy was second nature with him.
Two of the others had chosen professions, law and

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THAT FARM

medicine, but the last one, second in years, by the
way, although he had figured rather prominently
in athletics at Princeton, showed no anxiety to
break into the business or professional world. Si-
lently I had nursed a hope that they might develop
an inclination for the life I had labored through so
many years to find, and fruition, if it was to be,
rested in the Princeton “‘tackle.”” He was my
namesake and from childhood had been called
“Junior,” while I had been to him, for several
years, “‘Senior.”” He spent six months abroad
after leaving college, and after his return home
had appeared quite contented on the farm. His
propensity seemed at first to be toward the life of a
“country gentleman,” but I soon learned that his
gallops cross-country and into the villages near by
were the excursions of a “‘good mixer.” It was
not long before he had friends in quarters where I
had scarcely a speaking acquaintance. ‘Then, too,
he was observing. One day he said to me:

“Senior, there are some very necessary things
lacking on this farm.”

“‘I have no doubt of it,” I answered; “‘but, for
example?”

“Why, dogs,” he replied. “This is the first
place I ever saw in the country where there was
none, and there are coveys of birds everywhere
you turn.”

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THAT FARM

True enough, there was not a dog on the place,
and there had not been since I took it. That was
the irritating vacancy that I had never been able
to locate. But it was not long before Junior went
about companioned by two idolatrous Irish setters,
six months old and generously endowed with legs
and feet. He had entered into a compact with a
friend of mine, who was an ardent sportsman anda
breeder of those dogs, whereby title to the pups
passed to Junior in exchange for some promised
fall shooting.

Dogs and coveys of birds! What memories
they brought back to me of “Faust,” and “ Bow,”
and ‘“‘Bang Bang,” and “‘Sensation,”’ and the hunt-
ing grounds near Chetopah, and Abilene, and Car-
thage. I had not pulled a trigger in thirty years,
but the spell of it all came back to me, and I looked
forward to the following hunting season with the
enthusiasm and impatience of a boy —I even
helped Junior break those two setter pups.

That was another thing I was rapidly learning.
In the pursuit of business in the country one may
be surrounded by pleasures; or, in other words,
work and play at the same time. For example,
the directing of tilling or planting can be done
most effectively from the back of a thoroughbred
hunter, and one can, if he chooses, inspect the hogs
or supervise the dairy work and enjoy his dogs at

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THAT FARM

the same time, although I must admit the calves
and the setters are not prone to affiliate.

In analyzing the results of the previous year’s
farm work I found that my profits had in some in-
stances been much less than they should have been
because of themiddleman. Forexample, the prod-
ucts of Weber’s garden were sold at from 100 to
300 per cent. less than the prices paid by the con-
sumer. Beets and carrots were sold to the local
marketmen for three cents a bunch, and they in
turn retailed them for ten cents; cantaloupes sold
by us for five cents each were retailed for fifteen
cents; tomatoes for which we got twenty-five
cents a basket were sold for seventy-five cents; and
so with other things.

The saving of a few cents on a bunch of beets or
a basket of tomatoes may not appear to be of any
great importance on a farm, and in the year’s total
of receipts there would be no particular addition to
profits as a result of it, but if that same percentage
of saving could be maintained in all the depart-
ments of the business — and they all seemed to
admit of it — there would be a material increase
in revenue even though I did nothing to improve
the productiveness of my land. The extra profit
of the part of a cent on a spool of thread or a penny
or two on a yard of dress-goods had been matters
of great concern to me in the dry-goods business,

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THAT FARM

and by watching them carefully and constantly I
had made the business pay; so why should not the
saving of those same pennies on beets, tomatoes,
etc., be just as important to me on my farm?
They will tell their own story later on from the
credit side of Profit and Loss, where I have tried
to gather them by guarding the details of my busi-
ness. The disposition of produce has been just as
important to me as the raising of it, and unless this
first item is to be carefully watched over it is a
waste of time to turn the first furrow in the spring.

There were none of the obstacles that existed in
the city to prevent us from dealing directly with
the consumer, so we concluded to do it by running
a produce wagon of our own in the village. Weber
had put in elaborate hotbeds and coldframes, the
first plowing was done in his garden, and the vege-
table feature of the farm business bade fair to
amount to something. The previous year he had
put out 5,000 asparagus plants; in his opinion it
was the most profitable garden crop, and I think
he was correct.

Early garden truck pays wonderfully well in
comparison with the later vegetables. In a town
many people have little gardens of their own dur-
ing the season, enough to supply their tables for
six weeks or two months, but they do not under-
take to raise early vegetables. They are eager to

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THAT FARM

get them, however, and unhesitatingly pay good
prices for them. It is the same with winter cab-
bage and potatoes; we supply more than fifty fam-
ilies with them every year.

I hired a helper for Weber in the spring who was
to assist him in the garden and drive the wagon
through the selling season; his wages were $20 a
month. He was a young man of Weber’s nation-
ality, and while he knew that he was under the su-
pervision of Frank Waters, at the same time his
orders came from Weber, or more often from Mrs.
Weber, and they were religiously obeyed.

Seldom have I seen a more beautiful spring than
we had that year. Winter disappeared with the
snow and by the first of March the frost was almost
entirely out of the ground, then followed some
bright soft days that put the soil in splendid condi-
tion for tillage. An early start in spring is a won-
derful help to all farm crops, for they are better
able to withstand adverse conditions later in the
season if they have been well nourished in the be-
ginning. The incubators had worked industri-
ously and well during the late winter, and the fuzzy
results of their efforts were very apparent in the
warm spring sunshine. The hens, too, seemed to
share the good feeling that was in the air, for the
hennery was a pandemonium of cackling.

Our first crop of colts came in March; of the ten

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THAT FARM

mares we had bred, eight foaled, and they were a
handsome lot of colts — short backed, well limbed,
and full of the life and vigor of the sire. Of the
thirty outside mares that were bred, twenty-two
foaled. The owners of seventeen of them asked
to be allowed to keep their colts; I waived my right
of option and they each paid me a stud fee of
$15. I was disappointed in not getting the colts,
but I was glad to see a manifested interest in breed-
ing.

We commenced plowing on the 12th of March.
The fields we had turned under in the fall we plowed
again instead of using a cut harrow. In the 100
acres of turned under meadows, and also in the old
soy bean field, we planted corn, fertilizing as we
had done the year previous, except in the bean
field where we omitted the nitrate; 55 acres were
planted in oats following corn and buckwheat; 25
acres in buckwheat; and 3 acres in mangels. Our
crops came up in excellent shape, particularly the
corn, but the damage from crows compelled the
re-seeding of some of it. I have often wondered if
those pests have any other mission in life besides
pulling up young corn. Waters made some scare-
crows that were very effective. He sewed un-
bleached muslin together like a bag, leaving both
ends open; into each end he fixed a barrel hoop mak-
ing a cylindrical arrangement five feet in length.

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THAT FARM

Through the centre he passed a bamboo fishing
pole about twelve feet long, to the end of which he
tied the top barrel hoop. When those devices
were stuck up in the field, they swayed gently from
side to side, and it seemed to puzzle the crows, for
they would not venture near them.

During the early spring months I had noticed
that my wife spent a great deal of time sewing.
It surprised me, too, for she had made wonderful
plans during the winter for her garden — plans, in
fact, that seemed to threaten some of my farming
territory. There was a fountain to be installed,
which was the most important and earliest of all
the improvements, walkways were to be changed,
and my impression was that a sort of general trans-
formation was to take place, but her interest and
energy seemed to centre in her work basket, and
the faithful Italian worked on alone save for an
occasional visit from the guiding mind. Time and
experience have taught me that curiosity is a wo-
man’s right and a man’s curse, so the industrious
needle worked on from day to day, and dainty
ribboned mysteries were finished and carefully laid
by without even an inquisitive look to disturb their
creator. I had entertained a pardonable suspicion
for some time, however, because I had missed Nellie
from her regular duties, and one evening, after a
rather crowded day about the house, James Dolan

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. THAT FARM

informed me, through a I0o per cent. grin, that
“it's a Boys

But pride, even that parental pride that seems
justified in the advent of a son and heir, sometimes
goes before trouble. Hardly was the young Dolan
two days old when word came to me over the
’phone that my “milk driver had been pinched for
mussing up a man in Main Street.” I went into
the village and found James still sizzling with re-
sentment. One of our competitors, whose busi-
ness, unfortunately, had suffered because of Dolan’s
energy and our better milk, had attempted to kick
a crate of our bottles and our driver off the side-
walk into the street. He succeeded in so far as
the bottles were concerned, but had been unable
to fulfil that part of the contract involving Mr.
Dolan. The average Irishman objects to being
kicked under any circumstances, but when he has
a two days’ old boy baby at home he is particularly
sensitive to insult. The Court ordered our compet-
itor to pay for the bottles he had broken, and told
James to make a better job (which would have
been impossible) of the next man who attempted
to injure him or his property.

The dairy business had grown to be quite an
industry with us. By persistent canvassing and
constant advertising (even in the shape of “‘muss-
ing men up”) our daily sales had increased to 350

‘154

THAT FARM

quarts. I madea number of additions and changes
in the dairy to meet the needs of the increased
business. An 8-horsepower boiler was installed
to supply power for a turbine bottle washer, and
steam for a sterilizer. I put in a bottle-filling
machine that held eighty quarts of milk and filled,
automatically, six bottles at a time. The milk
was poured directly into the machine from the pails
through wire gauze and muslin strainers; the
bottled milk was put at once into iced water. I
did not use an aérator because I do not think there
is any particular benefit to be derived from it.

I bought ten additional cows that year at differ-
ent times. One of the best I got from a man who
lived about four miles out east of the village. I
will never forget that farmer and his farm. It
was the most perfect example of mismanagement
that I have ever seen. The man sent his son, a
travesty on American youth, to bring the cow up
for our inspection. After a long while the boy
appeared, some distance away, slowly driving the
animal. The father watched him for a few min-
utes and then called out: “Hurry up there, Her-
bert, you’re too slow to stop quick.” The cow
was a pretty grade Guernsey, about to have her
third calf; I bought her at his price, $60. The
man, I noticed, was ‘“‘dressed up” and about to
drive away when we got there. When the cow

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‘THAT FARM

deal was closed he informed us that he had been
summoned to do jury duty, but he would be right
back, he told us, ‘“‘because they didn’t want no
intelligent men on the jury.”” We heard afterward
that they kept him two weeks.

In previous years we had pastured our cattle,
but that spring we began soiling them. We started
with rye in the latter part of April and continued
it up to June, when we commenced feeding fodder
corn. The results obtained from soiling as com-
pared with pasturing left no doubt in my mind of
the superiority of the former method of feeding.
It enables a man to keep the close watch over the
appetites of his cattle that they must receive in
order to get the best results. We have found that
by tickling their palates they show their apprecia-
tion in the milk pail. Salt is given to them once a
day, fresh water is always available, and they are
turned out for exercise morning and evening. Our
dairy is not “‘model”’ in the sense of elaborate and
expensive equipment, nor do we consider our prac-
tices insusceptible of improvement, but our veter-
inarian’s bill, which for the past two years has
amounted to $90 ($80 of which was for four tuber-
culin tests of the herd), speaks for the healthfulness
of our dairy, and the daily milk records tell the
story of our herd’s productiveness.

In taking stock of my experiences at that time

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THAT FARM

I felt satisfied that the theories I had brought with
me from the city were sound enough — my mis-
takes had been made in the methods I adopted of
putting them into practice. My belief, at the be-
ginning, was that milk could be produced at a
profit. Sold in a quart bottle, at retail, it could;
sold in a battered forty-quart can, at wholesale, it
could not. Originally I was under the impression
that a farm could be successfully run by mail
through the medium of an overseer; that theory
was not entirely wrong. A floor-walker can con-
duct a hosiery or a millinery department very suc-
cessfully — but the boss must be in the building.
My ideas regarding the use of raw chemicals for
fertilizing had proven correct enough, but I learned
that in order to make them practical I had first to
till the soil and improve its condition. And so
with the other branches of the business. We were
not working along perfect lines, but the profit and
loss account showed that we were at least following
a practical course.

One afternoon in the latter part of June we were
getting the mowing-machines in readiness for hay-
ing when an old man came into the shop. His
wagon had “run dry” and he wanted to “‘ borrow”
some axle grease. He was a stranger whom I had
never seen before.

““Gettin’ ready to mow, are you?” he asked,

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THAT FARM

when he returned the wagon-jack and tub of
grease.

“Yes,” I said, ““we always like to take advan-
tage of the clear weather that comes at this time
and get through with the job.”

“Well,” he remarked, “‘you needn’t crowd your-
self none this year, for we’re goin’ to have a spell
of clear weather, unless I’m wrong.’’ And he
shuffled out into the road where his weary team
was enjoying the rest the “‘hot box”’ had afforded

them.
How often during the scorching weeks that fol-

lowed did I think of that grizzled old wayfarer and
his sinister prophecy. What weird intuitive powers
some old countrymen seem to have!

158

CHAPTER XV

IN WHICH WE BECOME ACQUAINTED WITH THE
FARMER’S BANE — SUMMER DROUGHT — AND
JUNIOR BECOMES A MEMBER OF THE FIRM

HERE is one human failing that we never
ce seem to overcome — “‘counting our chick-
ens before they are hatched.” A great
many people will not admit this failing, if it may be
called such, but there never was an undertaking
since the world began that was not conceived
in a firm belief that the coveted end would be
attained. And, after all, is it not just as well that
it should be so? If we believed that all our plans
were going to prove failures instead of successes,
how few we would make and how little we would
progress.

We had only sixty acres to mow that season —
it was all clover; our old meadows had been plowed
the previous autumn. The fields we seeded with
rye and timothy held a splendid stand of young
grass that gave great promise for the following
year. We were nearly three weeks cutting our

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THAT FARM

clover; it is not an easy crop to handle when it is
heavy, as ours was. When the weather was clear
we turned the hay over in the afternoon of the day
it was cut, then got it into the mow the following
forenoon. There is a tremendous loss in clover
when it is cured too dry, while, on the other hand,
if itis not sufficiently cured it will mold into worth-
lessness in the mow; you cannot take liberties with
it as you can with timothy.

It had been splendid haying weather, but we
needed a little rain. Farmers do not object to
getting in their hay between showers, because it is
done at a time of the year when the other crops
need moisture. Our oats and rye were harvested
through a continued clear spell, then we began to
look for a welcome “‘thunder head.”’

We little realized what was in storeforus. Day
by day we watched the sun sink from a cloudless
sky into a west that looked like a sea of burning oil.
I have often wondered if the author of ‘‘golden
sunset’? would have felt the same inspiration in
August if he had had a hundred acres of standing
corn that needed moisture. Six weeks passed
without a drop of rain, six weeks of a hot, dry wind
that blighted everything. Pastures were burned
to a crisp, and most of the springs and brooks went
dry. The cattle, even housed as they were,
with the barn windows shaded and screened

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against the torturing green flies, looked weary and
tired. The chickens, with their mouths open and
their wings held away from their bodies, seemed
to have had the energy scorched out of them.

There is something treacherous about drought;
we expect devastation to come with the tornado,
and destruction with the lightning, but it is hard
to associate sunshine with ruin. If you have
never been a farmer you cannot appreciate the true
meaning of drought because you only feel its effects
indirectly; you feel it in your bills for necessaries
long after it has done its deadly work. With the
farmer it is different because it strikes directly at
his source of income, just as fire or failure overtake
the business man in the city — with this difference,
however, that the farmer is not indemnified by in-
surance, nor is he able, except in irrigated districts,
to avoid or cope with the disaster. He may have
his efforts wasted and his capital wiped out in one
season of dryness, while he is a helpless witness to
the destruction.

In drawing a picture of farming it would be un-
fair to omit this disagreeable feature of it. The
city-weary man who in his heart knows the advan-
tages and opportunities of the life beyond his office
walls may, perhaps, have fashioned in his dreams
only the kindness of God descending upon the field
worker; he may have him tilling a magic earth

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that pours forth its bounty unstinted, or reveling
in an easy happiness that is proof against the sting
of hurt. But he must not lose sight of the practi-
cal side, or, better, the hazardous side. It exists in
agriculture to a lesser degree than in any other oc-
cupation, but it is there, nevertheless. The most
elaborate flights of the dreamer’s fertile imagina-
tion cannot lead him beyond the charms that are
here in the beautiful hill country, but the romance
of it all comes up hard every now and then against
little real things like drought and hog cholera.

Weber’s garden, into which he had put his best
efforts, seemed to be the burial place of all his
hopes. It would not have been appraised a total
loss, however, for he and his wife and their assist-
ant had been industrious with watering pots, but
Weber was to enjoy no bumper crop of garden
truck, and that weighed heavily on him.

The early spring had given the corn a good
start, and the strong, deep, green-colored plants
had stood the heat for a month, but then the
drought began to get its deadly work in on them.
Corn makes most during the latter part of July and
August, and it must not be set back then. During
the day the leaves curled up to protect themselves
against the merciless sun, and in the evening they
would spread out again to beg a little moisture
from the night. Wecultivated — cultivated until

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THAT FARM

the machines raised clouds of dust like mule teams
on the Mojave Desert. Every few days Waters
and I went out to examine the crop. It was the
seventh dusty week of the drought.

“Ts it ever going to rain?” I asked him one
day.

*““Tt always has,” he said, “‘and if it doesn’t wait
too long we'll save some of this corn; it isn’t ruined
yet by a long shot.”

We had walked down to the southern end of the
farm and were resting in the shade at the edge of a
corn field.

“There is one thing that surprises me,” I said,
‘and that is how we have escaped a recurrence of
cholera among the hogs during this long dry spell.”

““Tt is a wonder,” he answered, “‘but do ar

There was a long rumbling in the west, and a
cool breeze began rustling the corn.

“There comes your rain,” Waters said.

We looked out beyond the trees where we were
sitting, and, sure enough, the black clouds were
piling over one another as though they were in a
hurry to get somewhere. We sat enjoying the
breeze for a few minutes and then started back to
the house. But the rain was faster than we were,
and before we had gone two hundred yards it
came pouring down and drenched us to the skin.
As we turned through the gateway Waters said:

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‘Something told me to carry an umbrella this
afternoon.”

The rain fell steadily through the night, and in
the bright sunshine next morning the drought
seemed washed out of everything but the brown
fields and memory. The colts scampered about
in the pasture, the cattle enjoyed their exercise on
the cool, wet ground, and the hens resumed their
cackling. In the evening Junior and I went with
the setters fora walk. We drifted down to the hog
lot where the shotes were busy rooting in the damp
ground. Junior’s mind seemed always to guide his
feet and his tongue in the direction of animals — he
was) a stockman at’ heart: He appreciated tue
importance of hay and grain, but to him they were
like fuel that creates power for an engine.

‘‘T’ve got a scheme,” he said, as he drew a small
booklet out of his pocket. ‘‘Here’s a pamphlet on
‘anti-hog-cholera serum.’ As | understand it they
have found a means of preventing the spread of
that disease in a herd. The experiments with it
have been very successful. On the strength of it
I think we can afford to go in for more hogs.”

‘““How many had you thought of raising?” I
asked.

‘About five hundred or one thousand,” he said;
“‘those forty acres of woodland will make a splen-
did run for them.”

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THAT FARM

Five hundred or a thousand! My second son
was no “‘piker” at any rate.

“Down here at Bellville,” he continued, ‘‘there
are two big ice cream factories that ship to three
cities. I’ve been in to see them a couple of times
and they will take all the cream we can ship them
at thirty-five cents a quart. Now, my idea is to
put in a turbine separator, buy milk from the
neighboring farmers, separate it, ship the cream
to Bellville, and use the separated milk for the hogs.
A forty-quart can of milk will cost $1.60, and from
it we will get four and one half quarts of cream
which, at thirty-five cents a quart, will give us
$1.57. The remaining thirty-five and one half
quarts of milk will cost us three cents. That’s
pretty cheap hog feed, don’t you think?”

It was, indeed, a good scheme. The anti-hog-
cholera serum would have been sufficient justifica-
tion to me to go extensively into hogs, and with the
prospect of feed at that price there should be some
money in pork. It was an industry of itself well
worth any man’s undivided attention. But what
I liked most about it was that Junior had worked
the thing out himself. It showed that his atten-
tion was not wholly taken up with the clean-limbed
thoroughbred that he rode so well, nor with the
two setters that lived in his shadow, nor even with
a curly-haired companion whom I had noticed on

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several occasions tucked in most comfortably be-
side him when he drove. That curly-haired girl,
by the way, was becoming more and more appar-
ent about the farm.

My second son was given to riding alone much
less than formerly, and a silver cup, that stuck out
like a sore thumb in the living-room, bore some in-
scription about ‘‘mixed doubles” at the near by
Country Club. However, that is not an agricultural
matter; it is simply a condition that sometimes
manifests itself in a young man, like chilblains
or chin whiskers. It may cause a temporary
diversion of the mind from the more important
matters of business, but the distraction is seldom,
if ever, chronic.

The neighborhood sages predicted a cold winter
after the drought; further than that they had
*‘never seen it fail,’ they could offer no intelligent
reason for the prophecy. I had learned, however,
to respect the words of those old men, especially
in regard to the weather, so we commenced a little
earlier than usual to prepare for winter. The corn
had recovered somewhat during late August and
early September, but the ears were small and not
well filled out; there was little more to be expected
from it that season, so we commenced harvesting
about the middle of September. We hauled more
muck out of the ravine that autumn and scattered

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THAT FARM

it over the fields; I put on about twenty bushels of
lime to the acre with it. I don’t believe there was
any particular fertility value to that muck, but it
did improve the physical character of the soil, and
that was what I was after. Our fall plowing car-
ried us well up to the cold weather.

Stock feed was high that fall because the drought
had extended over the grain producing sections of
the whole country — in fact, it had started earlier
in many localities than it had with us. I sold all
my hay by December Ist.

Clover was in demand among the cattlemen, for
the short corn crop had reduced their supply of
ensilage, and few of them had sufficient fodder for
their stock. What corn and oats we had to sell
were ground and mixed, and we got $30 a ton for it.
Some rye was kept to be fed to the hogs, but the
bulk of the crop was sold at $1.10 a bushel.

The greatest drawback to stock raising here in
the east is the high cost of feed. It is more profit-
able for the farmer, as a general thing, to sell his
hay and grain than to feed it, for the simple reason
that he does not use the proper amount of judg-
ment in the character of live stock that he keeps.
There was a time when numerous factory by-prod-
ucts could be had, almost for their removal, that
made excellent feed for cattle and hogs, but the
inventive American mind has devised means of

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THAT FARM

utilizing for commercial use or human consump-
tion what was formerly waste matter. Separated
milk at any such cost as “‘Junior” spoke of, coup-
led with a protective remedy against cholera,
made hog raising a most attractive proposition,
and I began to look once more upon the industry
as I had done before my experience with disease
two years before.

If cholera can be kept away from the hog, or the
hog kept away from cholera, he is a profitable farm
product when raised under the proper conditions.
If kept confined in close quarters and fed from day
to day he will prove rather expensive in the end;
but where he is turned out on a range and supplied
with green food, and a mixture corresponding in
price and nutritive value to broken crackers and
separated milk that we feed, he will rapidly grow
into profit.

When I had cholera among my hogs, and for
some time after, I looked around to see if there was
any way by which I could guard against a recur-
rence of the disease. I found nothing of any value,
but during my investigation I was interested in the
theories some farmers held about hog raising.
There was a great diversity of opinion among them
in regard to breeding, feeding, and treatment of
cholera, but in the great majority of cases I noticed
that particular effort was made to avoid spending

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THAT FARM

any care on the hog. One man proudly boasted
of the fact that he had never had a sick hog on his
place and it was all due, he asserted, to the manner
in which he raised his animals. If I had been a
microbe I would have journeyed round the world
to get to that farmer’s pig pen; it beggars de-
scription. One must have seen it to appreciate its
true condition. But for a small platform of logs
along one side, the pens were a slimy mass of filth,
with old boxes, broken jugs, and various other
trash scattered about; in one pen the front truck
of a wagon was partly submerged in the ooze, and
while by no means ornamental it was an ideal back
scratcher for the animals. Ears of corn thrown
into the enclosure disappeared in the mire, but the
hogs apparently found them for they were as fat
and healthy as any I ever saw. Another farmer
whose ideas and equipment were just the other
extreme informed me that he counted on cholera
attacking his hogs every five or six years. I had
no idea of adopting the methods of the “‘ successful”
hog raiser that I had visited, so I looked upon the
industry as extremely precarious until I read the
pamphlet “Junior” gave me and investigated the
remedy described in it.

From October 15th to November 15th we en-
joyed a new feature of farm life — it was the open
season on quail. Such other pleasures as the farm

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THAT FARM

afforded us any other countryman could have had
if he would, but it was not given to every man to
walk a hundred yards from his front door and have
his dogs come to a point on a covey of quail, nor
to find nine coveys on his farm without crossing
on to a neighbor’s land. Junior had made a good
brace of dogs out of the two pups; they pointed and
backed very well, seldom letting their enthusiasm
get the better of them. My friend came up from
the city with the sire and dam of the pups, and the
four dogs worked beautifully together. Puppies do
much better in the field when they have old dogs
to steady them.

We had a week of splendid shooting. Junior
used a 20-gauge gun, but we stuck to the 12.
Somehow we older men don’t take kindly to these
small-bore guns of to-day — lack of confidence in
ourselves, no doubt. Later in the season we had
some good partridge shooting up in the hills.

The local weather prophets must have been in-
spired, for winter came in with a vengeance. A
heavy snow fell just after Thanksgiving, and the
cold weather continued almost unbroken until late
in January. We had our ice-houses filled by
Christmas.

Before a comfortable log fire in the living-room
I closed the farm books for the year; a transcript
of the accounts follows:

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THAT FARM

RECEIPTS

a.10o OU. tye at SI.10 per bu...) es

$ 3,465.00

95 tons ground oats and cob meal at $30 per ton 2,850.00

85 tons clover hay at $27.50 per ton .

65 dressed hogs, 7,856 lbs. at 10} cents per Ib.

65 plucks at 45 cents each

2,950 doz. eggs at 25 cents per doz..
650 dressed chickens at 55 cents each .
225 Leghorn pullets at 75 cents each .
Garden truck . :
Reaping 125 acres oats at dz 0 per acre .
65 tons baled rye straw at $17 per ton .

1,575 lbs. dressed meat at 15 cents per lb. .

109,643 quarts milk at 8 cents per quart .

Total

e

EXPENDITURES
Wages:
4 Russians at $25 per month each
I gardener at $20 per month .
Frank Waters at $50 per month .
James Dolan at $30 per month .

Chas. Weber and wife at $40 per month .

Keep of 6 men at $12 per month, each .
Fertilizer... .

IO cows at $72 each Goce

2 Berkshire boars at $40 each
Husking corn . ;
Butchering 65 hogs at te cents ge ;
7 tons hog feed at $13.50 perton . .
I market wagon a WA

ea

2,337.00
805.24
20.25
737-50
357-50
168.75
228.50
250.00
1,105.00
220.25
8,771.44

- $21,341.93

THAT FARM

I battler, 8 horsepower’: 3°02 Tye) A eg Be S eee
RitsORele Weer eek UE ey ee ars 50.00
i bottle washer... Aer oyy Savin ce || ov eS 30.00
Installing boiler and a er Night ceakl ee Ure baie 25.00
DDATY WOGICEMERIS es) sn! Pahoa’ gee aed oe 78.50
MADER ANNE aN Ihc) 03° o ee. ne WR nay ee 250.00
BASU AOC ay ar eich Gases! hie he's) Sa at) ee ae Reina 325.00
PERI B ARS Ciera Vick ak RKO RG AN) Side pe dee eens 128.25
James Dolan’s commission, 5 percent. . . . 438.57
Chas. Weber’s commission, § per cent. 74.61
Depreciation Io per cent. on a 16.50 eee
and; equipment: 4°... siti) 1,131.65
Interest 5 per cent. on investment at $28, ae ; 1,412.50
Frank Waters’s commission, 5percent. . . . 575.24
fc) 1 CY ee AE RM EWA bA Apert cll oreo

It had not been a year of particular abundance,
but there was no grumbling; even Weber seemed
to have forgiven Providence for burning up his
garden. His interest check was materially re-
duced because of the drought, but he did not com-
plain. Hecame from a race of people who are not
given to capitalizing misfortune.

My son’s attitude, at that time, toward the farm
left no doubt in my mind that he liked the life and
appreciated its possibilities as a business. He was
no longer a boy, and he was entitled to a definite
understanding regarding his position on the farm.
He had never alluded to the subject, and I had
deferred any reference to it until such time as I

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THAT FARM

thought it could be made without its having the
tendency to influence him. We had been going
over the books together one evening, discussing
the past year’s work and making plans for the fu-
ture. When we finished I said to him:

“Junior, I have given you boys all the latitude
you could expect in the selection of the ways you
wish to follow through life. Your brothers have
already chosen, and I have commended them be-
cause their choices admit of no criticism. My
wish and advice have always been that you be
the architects of your own futures, so long as you
worked upon wholesome plans, for you must abide
in them. I had not the freedom of choice in the
selection of a business or profession that you have
had; I was led by necessity over a good part of the
world, and through various occupations, before
circumstances finally enabled me to enter the field
where [I could succeed. You have been here for
more than a year now, and you have seen the four
corners of farming. You have seen the well-laid
plans of spring curl out of shape in a seven weeks’
drought, you know the destruction which disease
has wrought among the stock, and you know that
the dollar must be earned in agriculture just as in
any other legitimate occupation. On the other
hand, you know what it is to have the sun shine on
you, and to enjoy the freedom and independence

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THAT FARM
that are peculiar to the life of a farmer. From
your attitude I believe you are contented in, what
I consider, the prettiest profession in the world, a
profession that holds opportunity and happiness.
So, on January Ist, I am going to make you an
equal partner in this business and we will try our

luck together under the firm name of Harrison
Whittingham & Son.”

174

CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH I BECOME INTERESTED IN TURKEYS,
AND THE HOG BUSINESS, UNDER JUNIOR’S
GUIDANCE, BEGINS TO PAY

()*. Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys

were always bought from one of the mar-
ketmen in the village. They were excep-
tionally nice birds, and when I got the last one
(eighteen pounds at thirty-five cents), I inquired
about them. The butcher told me that for years
he had been getting the birds from an old fellow
named Gaines, who made his living raising them on
a little farm about seven miles north of the town
up in the hills. |
I had always wanted to raise some turkeys, but
there were very fewin our immediate neighborhood
and it was difficult to get eggs, so I had put it off
from time to time. One spring day, however, we
drove up to see Mr. Gaines. His little farm was
different from any I had ever seen before, except,
perhaps, one that I ran across years ago, on a hunt-
ing trip, sixty miles from a railroad in the heart of
the Ozark Mountains.

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THAT FARM

There were turkeys out in that country, too, and
plenty of them, but they were wild and it was in
quest of them that I came upon that mountain
farm that I shall never forget. Sometimes at
sundown I can see the little place just as I saw
it that afternoon thirty-odd years ago, in the
shadow of Philipp’s Knob. Government bulle-
tins, scientific farming, agricultural colleges — all
were unknown to those people who lived appar-
ently more by the grace of God than by their own
handiwork.

On a piece of cleared land that looked as though
it might have been chiseled out of the dense woods
there was some corn, about an acre of it, struggling
among the surface stones; a cow, and a couple of
pigs were about all else that I could see to furnish a
living; but the man might have been a woodsman
or an illicit distiller for all I knew because I did not
bother him with what might prove to be imperti-
nent questions about his private affairs. But per-
haps that strange little rudely made place out in
the wilderness has lasted in my memory because
of a peculiar circumstance connected with my visit
toit. The trip to Mr. Gaines’s farm brought back
to my mind every detail of it.

We had travelled a long way from camp on our
turkey hunt that day, and my companion and I
concluded to try to put up for the night at the

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THAT FARM

farmhouse and return the following morning.
They gave us supper — ham and eggs, soda bis-
cuits, fried potatoes, and terrible coffee — but un-
der no circumstances would they listen to our
remaining over night: in fact, we had been put
through a perfect “‘third degree”’ before we were
given anything to eat. At the supper table with
us, besides the farmer, his wife, and daughter, there
were two men, one rather heavy set and black
bearded, the other tall and thin, with a black
moustache. The heavy-set man had nothing to
say, but the other asked us about our hunting trip,
our destination, etc. He had a kind face and a
pleasant smile, and although both he and his
companion differed somewhat from our host, we
paid little attention toit. After supper, for which
the farmer declined our proffered pay, we set out
in the twilight for camp, where we arrived the next
day after sleeping all night in the woods. More
than twenty years after that night I was attending
the races one afternoon out at the Fair Grounds in
St. Louis. The track patrol had returned from an
inspection of the course and in front of the judges
stand I saw alight from the surrey the tall, pleasant
man that had been at supper that night down in
the Ozark Mountain farmhouse. He was gray
and stooped somewhat, but I recognized him. I
asked the gatekeeper what the man’s name was

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THAT FARM

and he said: ‘‘That’s Frank James, Jesse James’s
brother. He’s track inspector here.”’

Gaines’s place, unlike the one in the West, was.
not dilapidated; it was hand-hewn and weather-
beaten, and seemed to have grown there like the
trees and tangled underbrush that surrounded it.
For seventy-six years the old man had lived there,
and in all that time he had never been to the city
—he had never seen a trolley car. Yet, from
where I stood talking with him, one could in two
hours have been in the main entrance of the Metro-
politan Opera House. But he did have some nice
turkeys. ;

I do not recall ever having seen any great num-
ber of the birds on any farm before. Where they
are raised at all there is a small flock of a dozen or
less wandering about, but no particular attention
is paid to them. ‘The few appear to be healthy
enough, and it has always puzzled me why they are
not raised more extensively; certainly the price of
the birds in market would justify farmers in de-
voting some attention tothem. I have frequently
heard it stated that climate has much to do with
successful turkey raising. "The Albemarle pippin
does best at a certain limited altitude on the moun-
tainside down in Virginia; above and below that
belt an inferior grade of apple is raised. Perhaps
altitude may have something to do with turkey

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THAT FARM |

raising. Aside from that, however, I had always
been under the impression that they were difficult
birds to raise, but Mr. Gaines’s method was not
very complicated.

“A turkey,” he told me, “‘will lay about twenty-
one eggs before she goes to settin’. I take the eggs
out of the nest as they’re laid and keep ’em in the
house, turnin’ ’em over every day. I put from
sixteen to twenty-one eggs under the old bird when
she sets, and she’ll generally hatch all but one or
two of ’em. I feed the little fellers bread and milk
and let ’em run with the mother. When it comes
a rain I drive ’em up, but otherwise I just let ’em
go wherever they’ve a mind to — it’s their nature
toroam. When they get to be six weeks old I put
the old bird under a coop and begin feedin’ the
young ones oats or wheat. I have hatched ’em
under common hens, but they don’t seem to do' so
well as when they’re hatched under turkeys.”

“Ts that all you do with them?”’ I inquired.

“All, except to sell ’em,” he replied.

That little old man’s system of turkey raising
may or may not be correct, but his flock of nearly
a hundred healthy birds was a powerful argument
initsfavor. From him and two of his neighbors I
got 100 eggs at eight cents apiece. We put them
under Plymouth Rock hens and} hatched out 69;
of that number we succeeded in raising 52. Nearly

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(THAT FARM

all those that were! lost died before they were six
weeks old. We reserved all the hens for breeding
purposes. Any barnyard fowl that will sell for
$6.30 across a butcher’s counter is worth particular
attention on a farm.

In doing our spring plowing that year I used
gang plows in place of the single ones we had for-
merly used. With the three that I put into the
fields I accomplished twice the amount of work,
with no additional labor; in other words, our plow-
ing was done in about one half the time that had
formerly been required. We followed practically
the same plan of crop rotation as in other years;
no doubt we will be able to improve upon it as we
go along, but so far the system has proved very
good. Where corn had been on 110 acres we sowed
oats and clover, fertilizing with 50 pounds nitrate
of soda and 100 pounds acid phosphate to the acre.
In another field of 30 acres, where corn had been,
we planted soy beans, using a mixture of 200 pounds
acid phosphate and 100 pounds muriate of potash
to the acre. Where oats had been we fertilized
with 200 pounds dried blood, 250 pounds acid
phosphate, and 100 pounds muriate potash, for the
corn that followed. The 50-acre clover field, that
had been turned under in the fall, was also planted
in corn. We had Io acres in buckwheat, 12 in
wheat, andgin potatoes. Thenew timothy mead-

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THAT FARM

ows were helped with a mixture of 100 pounds
nitrate soda, 100 pounds acid phosphate, and 50
pounds muriate of potash to the acre.

In March we installed a steam-driven tubular
cream separator in a small building, erected for
the purpose, close to the boiler room. The ma-
chine had a capacity of 1,000 pounds per hour, and
cost $182.50 set up for use. Contracts were made
with some of the nearby farmers for the delivery
of milk, beginning May Ist, when the new crop of
pigs would require feeding. In the fall we had
reserved 40 young sows for breeding; they and the
other brood sows farrowed 410 pigs during Febru-
ary and March. The young stock was kept in the
pens for two months, then turned out into the
woodland, which was tightly fenced.

From the start Junior watched over every detail
of the new hog industry. He had conceived the
idea, and if it proved a failure he apparently did
not intend that it should result from mismanage-
ment. On paper it worked out most attractively,
but, of course, like everything of that kind, there
are always innumerable unforeseen circumstances
that may arise to alter the original calculations.
The separated milk enabled us to solve to a great
extent the problem of feed, and for protection
against disease we depended upon the yet untried
serum. He superintended the separating of the

I8I

THAT FARM

milk, the shipping of the cream, and the feeding
and care of the animals. It was a great sight to
see those pigs eat. Have you ever seen 4I0 pigs
at meal time? It’s very much like a bargain day
rush at a hosiery counter. I could not help, at
times, from picturing cholera parading among that
bunch of hogs, for the new serum treatment could
not blot out the memory of my past experience.
But Junior’s enthusiasm more than supplied any
that might have been lacking in me. ‘‘I wish we
had a thousand,” he said one day, “‘it’s easier than
clipping coupons!” What a pity it is that the
ardent zeal of youth contracts with expanding
years.

Napoleon once said that boys make the best
soldiers, and I believe they will make the best
farmers when they are brought into an apprecia-
tion of the opportunities in the country. When
the schooled mind of the country boy sets to work
to develop agriculture along scientific business lines,
the farmer will become the power in this country’s
affairs that his occupation entitles him to be. He
is a worker and a producer, and he should have a
powerful influence in directing the nation that he
clothes and feeds. But he will not enjoy that
privilege until he climbs up to the top rail of the
barnyard fence and looks about for the way to im«
prove his present condition. It is not hard to see.

182

CHAPTER XVII

IN WHICH THE VEGETABLE GARDEN AND
DAIRY MAKE PROGRESS

UR dairy business had grown until we were
compelled to make two trips daily to sup-
ply our patrons; the wagon went into the

village at six in the morning, and again at three in
the afternoon. To have gotten another wagon
would have meant an additional driver and another
team of horses, so I bought, instead, a light auto-
mobile. All things considered, it was cheaper
than the wagons and horses, and it enabled us to
deliver all our milk speedily in the morning. The
early morning is the time to sell milk at retail —
not the afternoon.

I have noticed that the most particular man in
the world about his food is the American workman.
His wife is a good plain cook, as a rule, but she
knows none of the culinary tricks by which inferior
food can be made palatable, so she gets good,
wholesome things for her table — fresh vegetables,
tender meats, etc. Gradually our milk worked

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THAT FARM

its way into the clean little homes of the workers.
The extra penny that it cost kept some of the
housewives from buying it at first, but after they
tried it they counted the additional penny a day a
good investment.

John Conway was the hotel keeper in the village.
He was more popular than any two other men in
town. John’s baby had been sick for some time,
and the local talent had not been able to locate the
trouble. Country doctors don’t, as a rule, win
many Nobel prizes, but probably it is because they
have so little practice. Anyhow, John sent into
the city for a specialist, who came up the following
day with a trained nurse. Then Conway stopped
James Dolan in front of the hotel.

“Jim,” he said, ‘‘this new doctor says my kid
has got to have rich, pure milk every day from the
same cow; can you bring it to me in a bottle every
morning?”

“Sure, I can. We’ve got cows out there that
give milk that’d put fat on a rainbow’s shadow,
and Ill have one milked special for you every day.”

In a month Conway’s baby had gained five
pounds, and James Dolan was quick to turn the
fact to commercial use. We had the baby’s pic-
ture published in the village paper with a full
account of the sickness and salvation. That an-
cient method of advertising is not used much now-

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THAT FARM

adays, because the fakirs have worked galled spots
on it and it won’t go. The woman in Milwaukee,
for example, no longer wastes her money on the
“‘wonderful infant food”’ that is advertised under
a picture of some fat Cincinnati baby, and the
thin-haired Omaha débutante is no longer caught
by the Chicago “‘dandruff cure’? man who baits
his hook with the picture of a flowing haired girl
from Wabash Avenue. But in our little commu-
nity, where a living verification of the story was
wheeled up and down Main Street ina baby-buggy,
the hackneyed ‘‘ad.”” worked wonders. There
were many other mothers in the village, generously
endowed with offspring, and it was not long before
the automobile delivery wagon stopped at most of
their doors.

When we discontinued the milk wagon, the horses
were turned over to Weber for use on his vege-
table wagon. That wagon was painted lemon
yellow with black striping, as all our farm wagons
were, and had a white canvas top with slightly pro-
jecting covers like awnings on each side. The bed
extended out over the wheels about six inches, and
when it was loaded for market with vegetables
carefully banked on both sides it made quite a nice
appearance. I know the little care spent upon
equipment was a good investment because it helped
to make sales.

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THAT FARM

Weber commenced making trips to the village
in April, selling asparagus and eggs; in the early
part of the season he got forty cents a bunch for
asparagus. He raised some twenty-odd varieties
of vegetables, and most of them were readily sold
to the townspeople.

The vegetable garden wasapicture. There were
no graveled walkways bordered with flowers, no
fountains, no rustic benches — just vegetables.
It is hard to add to the beauty of a well-kept mar-
ket garden. Weber had a very good knowledge of
gardening, and he was ambitious to improve it.
He did not stick stubbornly to ancient ideas; he
believed that modern garden practices were better
than old methods, just as he believed that the auto-
mobile (although he had never ridden in one) was
an improvement upon the two-wheeled cart that
his ancestors used in the suburbs of Hamburg.

He read market garden literature whenever he
could find time, and looked carefully over all the
seed and implement catalogues. He had a weak-
ness for trying new seeds, and every season found
him doing a certain amount of experimental work.
When anything proved particularly good he always
reserved some of the seed for the following year.

But the vegetable garden did not escape criti-
cism. Like the rest of the farm it suffered by
comparison with the ideals of Mr. George Gunn,

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THAT FARM

who never let slip an opportunity to find fault
with our farming. He was the R. F. D. man.
For six days in the week Mr. Gunn delivered mail
for the Government, and on the seventh he preached
what was alleged to be the word of God in a little
country meeting house. Temperamentally he was
hardly a man one would look to for spiritual °
inspiration, and physically.he was by no means
prepossessing; his face was abundantly covered
with a beard that resembled the end view of a
painter’sfadedduster. Our plowing, our planting,
our harvesting, all seemed to fall below the stand-
ards of Mr. Gunn, and one day in the fall, our
hunting brought forth an account of his exploits
with jaguars in South America, that delayed the
next farmer’s mail nearly half an hour.

Junior always resented that reflection upon our
work in the hunting field. However, one spring
day when the agent of the Postal Department
opened our mail box, a very active, but little do-
mesticated, country cat suddenly came out from
inside. The alarm of the South American jaguar
hunter was imparted to his faithful old mare Sallie,
and she carried him and his cart rather hurriedly
down the road for a quarter of a mile. Old Sallie,
fortunately, was ‘‘touched in the wind” and that
was as far as she could go on high gear.

Then followed a breach of friendship between

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THAT FARM

Mr. Gunn and our farm — a blissful period during
which we got out mail ungarnished with captious
conversation. But the fates were against us, for
about two weeks later, old Sallie, out of pure mean-
ness, laid down in the shafts at our front gate.
All manner of persuasion, all styles of kicking, and
all brands of profanity failed to stir the old bay
mare, and finally Waters went to the rescue.

‘What's the matter,” he asked, “‘has.she got
Goer it)...

“Colic, hell!’ old Gunn snapped out: “‘it’s just
the devil in her. She’s done this on me several
times lately.”

‘“‘Just wait a moment,” said Waters, and he
went back to the house. He returned with a small
bottle of water which he poured into Sallie’s ear —
she was on her feet in an instant.

‘“‘[T’m going to carry a bottle of water in my mail
bag from now on,’’ Mr. Gunn said, as he drove
away, smiling gratefully through his bristly beard.

There was one thing I had wanted to do for a
long time, that was to put upa silo. I thought of
doing it ourselves during some dull period, but dull
periods were becoming more and more infrequent
as the development of the farm progressed, so I
gave the contract to a builder in the village who had
done a great deal of that kind of work for dairymen
in the vicinity. At the end of the cattle barn he

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THAT FARM

built a silo 32 feet high and 21 feet in diameter,
which was big enough, I figured, for all of our re-
quirements. [I had been told that the feeding of
ensilage to dairy cattle had a tendency to affect
their milk injuriously, but my experience has been
that it increases the quantity, and, although I
have made no actual tests, I am satisfied that it
also improves the quality. We not only feed it to
our cattle, but to our horses as well; it keeps them
in splendid condition through the winter. Of
course, it is fed more sparingly to the horses than
to the cattle, and in addition the usual grain ration
is given them.

Perhaps a little bookkeeping on that subject
may not be out of place here. The contractor’s
charge for putting up that silo, including every-
thing, was $515, the cost of filling it was $170, a
total of $685. Interest on that investment, at 6
per cent., amounted to $41.10 a year. The in-
creased production of milk which resulted from
feeding ensilage paid that interest in less than one
week.

After the carpenters had finished the silo, Junior
gave them a few days’ work building a kennel. It
was only a small building 16 feet long and 10 feet
wide, divided into two compartments, with wired
runways from each. The building has been en-
larged since then. The exchange of two puppies

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THAT FARM

for some shooting was the beginning of a friendship
between Junior and my city friend that grew into
a partnership in the breeding of Irish setters. The
paint was hardly dry on the new kennel before an
imported bitch arrived, in whelp to the best dog
jn this country. She whelped seven beautiful pups.
That was the beginning of a kennel that now has
five brood bitches and two stud dogs — one a
“champion.”

The village house painter was a great hunter
and he wanted one of the setter puppies very much,
but £50, the price at which they were sold, was too
much for him, sportsman though he was. One
day Junior told him to come up and get a pup and
instead of paying cash for it he could do a little
“touching up” that Mrs. Whittingham wanted
done about the house. The painter was very
much pleased with the proposition and sent a man
up to do whatever was required.

The man spent a good many days “‘touching
up,” and the village painter afterward said it was
the worst bargain he had ever made, because Mrs.
Whittingham had made his man paint nearly the
entire inside of her house for that pup.

There is a sympathetic tie among men who hunt.
Regardless of their years, they meet on the same
plane and pack their guns and follow the dogs in a
brotherhood of contentment. My city friend be-

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THAT FARM

came a frequent visitor to the farm. He was an
engineer by profession — due, I think, to the fact
that his father had been one before him and the
parental influence had shaped the son into the
mantle of his father. He filled it very gracefully,
however, for my friend ranks among our best en-
gineers to-day. But instinctively he was a farmer,
and he came to be a frequent visitor with us, not
alone during the hunting season, but at all times
ofthe year. Inthe spring he would come to watch
the plowing, and haying time would often lure him
into the meadows where he would pitch hay for the
exercise of it. During the fall — pay day season
on the farm — he was most interested, for it was
then that he saw the business side of it. He would
stand beside the threshing-machine fascinated
while the stream of grain came out and bag after
bag was carted away to the granary. At hog-
killing time he would look over the rows of clean
dressed pork ready for market and figure out the
income from them. Then he would run his hand
through his hair, shake his head, and say he was
going to get a place and start farming; but the
following Monday morning would find him going
back to the city to study over the tensile strength
of bridge cables, reinforced concrete, hydrostatic
pressure, etc. He was always a welcome guest.

He had hunted and fished all his life and we never
IgI

THAT FARM

tired of hearing the interesting stories of his ex-
periences.

‘“‘Thirty-odd years ago,” he told us one evening,
“five of us went down into the Indian Nation
shooting. In the party was the late John W.
Gates, a good shot and a true sportsman. Al-
though most of those men have since accumulated
fortunes, there was none of us to whom even the
cost of transportation was not a serious considera-
tion at that time. The luxury of a hired cook was
not to be thought of, so we drew lots to determine
which of us should fill that important, but objec-
tionable, position. The ‘black bean’ fell to me,
with the understanding, however, that whoever
criticised the cooking should assume the duties of
that office himself. For one whole day I struggled
with the domestic side of camp life. My efforts
with the tin coffee pot and the frying pan seemed
to be most satisfactory, for there was not a breath
of criticism from any one. The birds were plenti-
ful and the hunting was superb. Around the fire in
the evening my companions graphically recounted
the incidents of the day’s sport, without a note
of pity for the cook. I had not gone into the In-
dian Nation to be a chéf, so I made up my mind to
get rid of the job.

“The next morning, in mixing the biscuits for
breakfast, I put a heaping double handful of salt

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THAT FARM

into the dough. Those ponderous yellow soda bis-
cuits were a terrible infliction at best, but salted
as they were for breakfast that morning they would
evoke criticism from starvation itself. So I folded
my arms and waited for results.

“Three of the men ate sparingly of the biscuits
in silence. Then Gates came in — he was late for
breakfast. He hurriedly broke open one of the
steaming ‘sinkers,’ buttered it thoroughly, then bit
off a generous mouthful. Suddenly he stopped
chewing, and said ‘G-r-e-a-t G-o-d, these biscuits
are salty — but they’re good!’”’

193

CHAPTER XVIII

IN WHICH I REVIEW THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS
OF A SUCCESSFUL YEAR, AND APPEND
A BALANCE SHEET

UT for a certain pride that I felt in my new

- meadows I might pass over that year’s
haying season with only a_ dollars-and-

cents mention of it in the annual statement of ac-
counts, for of all farming operations the story of
the harvesting of hay is one that gains little in re-
telling. In extensive farming, however, I know of
no nicer crop to raise nor one that pays better. I
had worked my land for several years, tilling, crop-
ping, and removing surface stones; some of the
fields had been ‘‘wet and sour” and, in the opinion
of my farmer neighbors, the time and effort I had
spent upon them were wasted, but the 221 tons of
hay that we mowed from 105 acres that June was
another silent but effective argument for and
against our conflicting ideas regarding agriculture.
Then, too, “haying time”’ is the commencement of
the harvest season, a period of the farmer’s year

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THAT FARM

that may always be written of without danger of
tiresome repetition, for it marks the beginning of
dividends from the soil, and dividends are always
interesting — even in a cloister. |

When the mowing was finished I noticed a dozen
or more uncut pieces of grass about ten feet in
diameter, in different parts of the meadows. They
added nothing to the appearance of the fields and
might even have conveyed the impression that
a “city man” had done the mowing. I asked
Waters about it, and he told me that every bunch of
grass contained a quail’s nest, and that orders had
gone forth from the junior member of the firm not
to disturb them. The love of agriculture was ap-
parently not the ruling passion on the farm; in
fact, I had noticed that into the talk of crops and
pigs and separated milk and poultry little bits of
shooting conversation would creep here and there,
and the care of the Irish setters was not neglected
because of the activity in other branches of the
business.

But the hayfields and the kennels and the rest of
the farm, in fact, were dull and uninteresting com-
pared with those departments over which Weber
exercised a most active superintendence. The bord-
ers of his vegetable garden seemed to mark the
limits of his universe, and in it he worked under high
pressure during every daylight hour of the season.

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THAT FARM

I should like to write into this short history of
my farm a fuller account of its vegetable garden —
or, perhaps, of its vegetable gardener and his wife
— of the way they systematize their work and the
cheerful manner in which they go about it, but
those things are less interesting when written of
than when one is brought in daily contact with
them. I know [ am not prejudiced toward any
people because of the hue of their skin, the land of
their birth, nor the God they worship, but I must
confess to a rapidly growing conviction that Ger-
man gardeners are second to none. It is interest-
ing and instructive to watch the well-directed
energy of Weber and his wife. My vegetable gar-
den has paid because of no other influence than
their common sense and hustle.

To any farmer, not too far removed from a mar-
ket, I say get a good man and raise vegetables —
you won’t regret it. The financial success of a
vegetable garden depends very largely upon the
manner in which the produce is offered to the pub-
lic. First of all raise good vegetables, display
them in an attractive way, and you will find that
the salesman is a third consideration. ‘The prod-
uce wagon afforded Weber a new and better way
of disposing of the products of his departments,
and in characteristic fashion he made the best of
it. The vegetables were put up in the most at-

196

THAT FARM

tractive manner: beets, carrots, parsnips, turnips,
etc., were washed and tied in bunches, and such
things as beans, peas, tomatoes, etc., were packed
in split baskets. Eggs were put up in pasteboard
cartons holding a dozen each, with the farm name
printed on the cover.

We had appealed to our dairy customers for
patronage by personal canvass and direct adver-
tising, and the produce was sold principally to
them. Most of them ran weekly or monthly ac-
counts, as they did with the milk, but there were
also a number of cash customers. The day’s re-
ceipts from that market wagon on one occasion
amounted to $42.75. Waters kept a record of
everything that went out on the wagon, just as he
did in the dairy, the drivers were each supplied
with $5 in cash with which to make change, and
when the wagons returned from the village the
money was turned over to Waters and he checked
up the accounts. Each evening the currency was
given to me with a statement.

By way of illustrating the value of utilizing all
practical sources of income on a farm, I want to
say a word about my ‘“‘borrowed” thoroughbred
stallion. There is, of course, a difference of opin-
ion about the value of crossing this particular
breed of horse on native work mares for the pur-
pose of producing a good, serviceable farm horse.

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THAT FARM

Without caring to invite controversy on the sub-
ject I must say that from my observations and
experience I am satisfied that the infusion of thor-
oughbred blood not only produces a better type of —
horse, but also a vastly superior quality of horse;
an animal with sufficient weight for all farm pur-
poses, and possessing more intelligence, stamina,
and courage than his cold-blooded brother. But I
meant only to quote from my account books. I
had made a particular effort to interest my neigh-
bors in horse breeding and my work had not been
entirely in vain. My proposition to take wean-
ling colts at $50 each had not met with much favor
from the start because few farmers object to “car-
rying along” a colt or two, and it is no mistake.
During the breeding season which closed in June,
sixty-two mares were bred to my horse and, with-
out exception, a stud fee of $15 was paid for each
service. Without considering the fact that the
stallion afforded a splendid riding and driving
horse, the cost of his keep for a year was $87.50.
He earned $930 in stud fees. And yet Uncle Tom
Stevens said to me one day, shortly after I got the
horse, ‘‘a stud will never pay around here.”

I think it is a sort of second nature with most of
us to like animal rather than plant life. The
average man, whether he be farmer or city slave
is attracted more by a puppy than a prize pump-

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THAT FARM

kin, more by acolt thanachrysanthemum. Some-
how or other after an examination of the growing
oats or wheat I would generally wind up among
the chickens or in the cow barn, and an inspection
of the cornfields, was, as a rule, merely a break ina
trip to the hog lot. Those 410 pigs interested me
more than anything else on the farm that year.
At weekly intervals in the spring we had planted
four acres in rape, which we cut and fed to the pigs
up to frost. In addition to the green food they
were given separated milk into which was mixed a
little ground rye and some broken crackers. Bi-
tuminous coal and lime were kept in the field, but
the hogs seemed to find all the minerals they re-
quired rooting around in the 4o acres of woodland.
How those pigs grew there in the woods! It was
apparently an ideal condition in which to raise
them, and it did not look as if we would have to
call upon the Agricultural Department for any
anti-hog-cholera serum. Still I did not spend any
hog money in advance. Junior, on the contrary,
was discounting the future. “Next year,” he said,
“‘we will have twice as many; pork means profit.
We can produce a thousand hogs on this farm every
year just as easily as a hundred.”

I gripped the rail on which we were sitting a
little tighter — just to shift my position.

In August my wife and I went to visit friends up

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THAT FARM

on the St. Lawrence River. We did not gofora
vacation. For two years, under various pretexts,
we had managed to avoid the trip, but the invita-
tion came a third time with renewed urgency, and
we found it easiest to accept it. We returned in
September and had missed very little of the farm
work. When we told our host and hostess that
business called us back to the farm, they were
amused, because, as they informed us, farming
meant to them simply an occupation in which idle-
ness was cradled. They had never looked upon it
as a business crowded with important details —
few people do.

That fall was the most important period in the
farm’s history. I had worked the place for four
years — the first year under an overseer, it is true,
and I count that year lost; the following three
years, however, I stand sponsor for, offering ex-
planations, but not excuses for the errors I have
made. Since, in most cases, results best tell the
story of our undertakings, I am going to write only
of our harvesting, omitting, with regret, many
happy incidents of our farm life that season, even
an account of our fall shooting. In three years
one can, underordinary circumstances, tell whether
or not he is going to succeed at farming. In that
time the soil, if properly handled, will yield divi-
dends on an investment of intelligent work; even

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THAT FARM

the “‘worn out” soil will do it, the soil that has
been abandoned and condemned.

If at the end of that time, under ordinary cir-
cumstances, a farm does not pay, or a profitable
way of working it is not in sight, then a man had
better lay aside his plow and pocket his loss, for he
is laboring in the wrong field. Because agriculture
is a pleasant and lucrative occupation it does not
necessarily follow that any one can make it so.
There are vocations in this world for every one of
us, and sooner or later each finds the sphere for
which he was begotten. Some must preach the
Word of Truth and some must push banana carts,
and to them no alluring voice sings a promise of
success in the fields; but at the same time there are
a great many of us intended for farmers who have
never even seen a plow.

Here in the country, particularly in the autumn
season, we who abide in the midst of its glories
breathe a pitying sigh for our less fortunate brothers
who spend their lives at the city’s wheel of fortune,
existing and hoping. Ofcourse there are two view-
points. Those same city brothers do not envy us
our lot, and to them we are “‘rubes,” ‘‘ pumpkin-
tumblers,” “‘hayseeds’? —in fact they have us
classified under a variety of names; but what a
pity it is that they cannot know our life, if not all of
it at least our golden autumn — our harvest time.

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THAT FARM

In those four years, changes naturally had
taken place. The soil was doing its work once
more like a piece of machinery that had been re-
paired and overhauled; we had learned the differ-
ent acres and how to handle them advantageously.
For the time at least we had hit upon a practical
plan for disposing of our farm products. We were
doing our own stock breeding, introducing new
blood, of course, wherever it was needed. In other
words the business was in practical shape and
progressing. The experimental work was not ended,
it never is in any business, but the costly pioneer
work was about over.

Another change had taken place, or is about to
take place, I should say, although I have avoided
bringing any account of its various stages of devel-
opment into this brief history of my farm. Ro-
mances.areasarule as insipid as they are important,
and even the love affair of my son and part-
ner has failed to inspire me to work its silly de-
tails into an account of farm facts. Junior is to
be married in the spring. Why it has been de-
layed so long I do not understand, because he has
what might be diagnosed as an acute attack. The
combination of a good-looking, curly-haired girl
and an erstwhile Princeton tackle can result only
one way. There is nothing new about it nor in-
teresting; it is a temporary paradise for those who

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THAT FARM

find it, and a tolerant world smiles its approval and
blessing.

When we began husking corn in October we had
already harvested 3,520 bushels of oats, 1,580
bushels of soy beans, 560 bushels of buckwheat,
385 bushels of wheat, and 873 bushels of potatoes.
The corn husking was done, as in previous years,
by outside labor; 8,825 bushels were gathered and
stored in the cribs. The year had been ideal for
farming; throughout the growing season weather
conditions had been excellent and we had good
crops asaresult. Our hogs were the only crop re-
maining to be disposed of. Hay and grain are
harvested at certain times each year, they are
stored in the barns and sold when conditions
are favorable, but witha crop like pork, which must
be marketed as soon as it is killed, the butchering
season is governed largely by the price of pork. It
is a peculiar thing, but farmers always like to get
top price for their hogs; every quarter or half cent
below the highest is counted an actual loss which
could have been avoided.

From early autumn Junior had watched the pork
market very closely. During November dressed
pork was ten and one half and eleven cents;
early in December it dropped to ten cents, then
began to advance steadily until the middle of the
month when it sold at eleven and one half cents.

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THAT FARM

The week before Christmas David Knapp and his
boys with five assistants started in to work on our
herd. We reserved 50 young sows for breeding
purposes, and the remaining 360 were butchered;
they averaged 1293 pounds and we got eleven cents
a pound for all but 1,000 pounds, which we ground
into sausage after a recipe which Waters had
brought with him from Virginia. The year be-
fore he had made some for our own use and it was
of such excellent quality that I made up my mind
then to put it onthe market. We packed it in one-
pound sealed cartons and sold it at twenty cents a
pound directly to the trade. We had on our
books 310 customers who bought farm produce
from our wagons. All the milk they used during
the year was supplied to them by us, and in addi-
tion they purchased all the eggs, poultry, and
vegetables that we produced on the farm. Our
produce was sold to the consumer below the retail
market price, but it meant not less than 100 per
cent. more than we could have gotten at wholesale.
With the single exception of pork, there was not a
farm product of ours for which we did not receive
more than our neighbors got for theirs. For ex-
ample, we got eight cents a quart for our milk, while
other farmers got four cents for theirs. Our eggs
averaged thirty-two cents a dozen as against an
average wholesale price of twenty cents. The gen-

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THAT FARM

eral average price received for our vegetables was
150 per cent. higher than the local wholesale price.
These figures, I might add, were the result of care-
fully kept records — they were facts, not guesses.

One day I was talking with one of our local butch-
ers about a pair of colts I had for sale. We were
standing near the entrance to his shop, and while
we were talking, a farmer was bringing in some to-
matoes, a. dozen baskets, that he had sold to the
butcher at 25 cents a basket. Before that farmer
had carried the last basket from his wagon into the
shop the butcher’s clerk had sold two of them toa
customer at 75 cents each.

I said to the butcher, “‘ You are getting a little
more for your tomatoes than I am. I am selling
mine at 65 cents a basket.”

But he did not seem at all pleased at the fact
that he was beating me on prices, because our yel-
low produce wagon had made his cash register ring
less often than it did formerly. I was not at all
popular with the local marketmen when that
wagon began its trips into the village. They re-
sorted to any number of primitive little schemes to
injure my business, but when they realized that the
wagon was to be a permanent fixture in the town
their wrath abated somewhat. It is right hard to
stop the sale of fresh vegetables except by selling
fresher ones.

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THAT FARM

In transcribing the records of accounts for the
year the various items, for the most part, are
worthy of no particular mention, because they
differ only in quantity from similar records of pre-
vious years. I feel, however, that Weber’s work
is entitled to more mention than a mere ledger en-
try of results. From his garden he marketed 750
dozen ears of sweet corn, 92 dozen bunches of as-
paragus, 225 baskets of tomatoes, 2,150 bunches
of small vegetables, carrots, beets, turnips, etc.,
155 baskets of peppers, 175 baskets of string beans,
85 bushels sweet potatoes, 192 baskets of peas, 925
cantaloupes, 75 baskets of lima beans, 65 dozen
cucumbers, 365 egg plants, 250 dozen heads of
lettuce, 1,100 heads of cabbage and various other
things. The total receipts amounted to $1,445.55.
In addition to the vegetables that were sold, our
own table and all the workers on the farm were
supplied throughout the season from the garden.
Although no credit was given for these supplies,
it is, nevertheless, an item that should be taken
into consideration. There is a certain satisfaction,
however, in having the farm table supplied from
the place; to commercialize that feature of the life
would rob it of one of its principal charms.

With the other farming operations: out of the
way for the year, the kennel came in for its share of
attention. After the shooting season was over the

206

The hog industry is Junior’s pet hobby

THAT FARM

dogs were shaped up for the winter shows.' We
had eleven entries in the “puppy,” “‘novice,” and
““open”’ classes, and during the early winter the
dogs were carefully prepared for the coming exhi-
bitions. Our kennel is not one of the farm’s best
money makers, but it is second to none in impor-
tance, and as show time approaches every one on
the place is keenly interested in the results.

At the New York show that year every one
of our dogs was placed; we won three firsts, four
seconds and two thirds, besides two specials.
Champion Lady Rakin, who has always earned
honor for our kennel in the show ring, has been re-
tired. Late in November she whelped seven beau-
tiful puppies, and next year we will have some
entries for the circuit that will make the best Irish
setters in the country grip their thrones. And if
our business lends us the time we intend to be well
represented in the field trials.

We operated the mill throughout the fall and
early winter, grinding and mixing feed, and had no
difficulty in disposing of all that we could turn out.
That was the last of the year’s farming operations,
and we closed our books on New Year’s Eve. A
copy of the accounts follows:

RECEIPTS

Soa tons hay at'$24.25 . . . . . « $ 4850-c0
1,100 bushels soy beans at $1.90 per sbuteher'® : 2,090.00

207

THAT FARM

1,500 bushels ground oats at $30 per ton .
140 tons oat straw at $15.50 per ton .

6,500 bushels corn and cob meal at $28.75 per

ton e e . . e . e . e
3,368 quarts cream at 35 cents per quart .

45,000 pounds dressed pork at 11 cents per lb.

1,000 pounds sausage at 20 cents per lb.
350 hog plucks at 40 cents each .

5,285 doz. egg at 32 cents per doz. .
1,017 dressed chickens at 60 cents each

8,200 bundles fodder at 3 cents per bundle .

1,735 pounds meat at I5 cents per pound
Garden truck

Stallion service fees .

600 bushels potatoes at $1 per bu

138,700 quarts milk at 8 cents per qt.

Total

EXPENDITURES

Wages: 4 Russians at $30 per month each .

I gardener at $20 per month
Frank Waters at $50 permonth .
James Dolan at $30 per month .

Chas. Weber and wife at $40 per math :

Keep of 6 men at $12 per month each .
Fertilizer

Husking corn . :

Butchering 360 hogs at Eu cents eh

22 tons hog feed at $14.25 per ton

I steam driven tubular cream separator .
1 delivery automobile

208

# 787.50

2,170.00

3,270.41
1,178.80
4,950.00
200.00
140.00
1,691.20
610.20
246.00
260.25
1,445.55
930.00
600.00
11,096.00

$36,515.81

S
ge meh eg ee cla a oe
Be itea se gece. aus

THAT FARM

NER 5) |i hia! oat? Vieae Gt a) os, SF) SEGLOS
Piume silo |. |. : ea oN, No Ye 170.00
2 sets farm harness at $48 sh vidi Balers tae 96.00
33,680 quarts milk (for separating) at 4 cts. a qt. 1,347.20
Deer mCKe ER TS To Re Vaal fa os 94.25
Dae mecerem eis NES ree Wei ibee ceh 215.65
oy EEO ae Bale Se Ia Des BO Af dr 250.00
Naborance . . |. AT fase a oats D8 A) ea 355.00
James Dolan’s commission, 5 percent. . . . 554.80
Charles Weber’s commission, 5 percent... . 187.35
Depreciation 10 per cent. on $12, ohn live

stock andequipment . . . Aa 1,255.85
Interest 5 per cent. on investment, $28, a0 oh 3 1,412.50

Frank Waters’s commission, 5 per cent. . ’ 1,142.89

SADC o Nici) 3) \ wt) ta heh) bolt vad bad wah a PERL SROLT
1S AES ST) SEN Toon ee SOR SE AGO: a Baie cal aE 2 to Hoy |

There is no entry in the foregoing statement
covering the disposition of calves; some of them
were killed and consumed on the farm, and the
others were turned over to the local butchers in
exchange for other meats. The item of 1,735
pounds of meat covers part of those transactions.

A heavy snow had fallen during Christmas week
and on New Year’s night Junior, wrapped in a
coon-skin coat, drove off in a sleigh to go “‘visiting.”’
When I was his age I was bill clerk in a St. Louis
_dry-goods house — my salary was $18 a week.

209

CHAPTER XIX

IN WHICH I TAKE STOCK OF MY FAILURES AND
SUCCESSES, AND ARRIVE AT A FEW CON-
CLUSIONS ON BUSINESS FARMING

T IS springtime again as I write the concluding
chapters of the early history of my farm. Jam
younger than when I first saw its weedy acres,

several years ago, from the rear seat of a country
real estate man’s surrey, although my hair is a
shade lighter (but that is only sun bleach, I am
sure). From where I sit I can look out in three
directions over my farm. It is no lonely wilder-
ness, naked of opportunity, where bent-backed
toilers labor from dark to dark, nor is it a sylvan
nook inhabited by frolic fairies; it is a prospering
commercial industry set in the midst of every com-
fort and luxury. Machinery has taken most of
the backache out of labor, and the toilers manage
to find time to keep posted on “batting averages”
and ‘‘white hopes.’”’ Frolic fairies there may be
over in the forty acres of woodland, but they don’t
seem to interfere with the pigs any.

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THAT FARM

Still we are not blind to the beautiful in nature
because we see it from a commercial standpoint.
To me the “fragrant apple blossoms”’ (if they are
on a healthy tree) are really more fragrant because
I seein them the promise of prime fruit: the “‘ golden
corn” is just as golden, although I estimate the
yield per acre; the charm of the “gentle cow” is to
me in her dairy lines; the song of the birds, and the
violet and gold of the sunset lose none of their
sweetness or beauty because they come to me while
I am planting potatoes or feeding pigs.

Out to the north, where not so very long ago
untrimmed trees struggled in a tangle of neglect
within the tumbled down confines of James Bell-
air’s home acre, there stretches a flower garden
that an ex-dry-goods man’s wife has made to bloom
like one of those bits of fairyland on the banks of
the Yangtze-Kiang. Across the road to the west
three gang plows have started in on the season’s
work, and out through the south window I can see
the cattle — there are sixty-odd of them now —
in the pasture lot that lies beside the cluster of
farm buildings.

It was no accident of fate that brought me to the
country, no desire to ride a malformed hobby, nor
an effort to save, if possible, the frayed end of an
overworn life. I had spent, ’tis true, much of
my life in the commercial world, but fortune had

2I1

THAT FARM

been kind to me and those years had not been lean
ones. If dollars mean success, then I had found it
in a modest way; but in the accumulation of them
there was none of the real gratification and happi-
ness that comes with the fulfilment of one’s true
mission on earth. I had commenced working at a
time in life when ordinarily a boy lays a foundation
of happy memories that in later years he rests his
tired brain among. A great part of my youth was
spent piloting a pen, and if there was anything ro-
mantic in the duties of a bill clerk I never learned
it. Still I was an active man when I left one of
the busiest cities in the world and came to the coun-
try; I came because I believed the fullest reward
for effort lay in the fields rather than in the shops.
Temperamentally I have always been a coun-
tryman because I like the dimensions of the life.
Congestion has always been my pet aversion.
The crowds that jostled me as a boy outside of
Dan Rice’s old one-ring circus tent, and made me
spill half my pink lemonade, left a deeper impres-
sion on my mind than the wonderful feats of the
performers inside. The electric lighted skyscra-
pers of civilization, between whose eaves the sun-
shine occasionally finds its way to the street, are to
me like tombstones over wasted lives.
Commercially I have been a farmer since I first
began to study the problem of supply and demand.

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THAT FARM

Where is there another occupation so independent
of society and upon which society is so dependent?
The city merchant produces nothing, and, labor as
he will, his reward is measured by other hands —and
competition; while the farmer, on the other hand,
furnishes power for the commercial world. Agri-
culture is the backbone of the country’s prosperity
and where it does not now receive first consid-
eration in the affairs of the nation, it must event-
ually. The factory is because of the farm; the
factoryman looks to the farmer, but the farmer is
dependent upon no one — heis his own master.
The practicability of farming had appealed to
me for a long time before I finally closed my city
desk and cametothecountry. I had no practical
knowledge of farming when I started, and he who
in his ignorance insists that it is the first essential to
success, needs only the elongated ears to completely
establish his identity. I did, however, bring with
me some theories that I had learned from years of
study. I knew more than the average man, per-
haps, about live stock and crops and the soil that
grows them, but I learned it from the pages of
books that were written for the guidance of farmers
— written by those who have studied and devel-
oped correct methods after having learned the
wrong ones. I found, to begin with, that the farm-
‘ing business, like any other, succeeds best when

213

THAT FARM

personally conducted; every detail of it is impor-
tant and must receive constant, close attention.
The soil is a wonderfully reciprocative thing, but
it has no brains; it cannot think for itself; it must
be carefully handled; and in order to do that, one
must have intelligent, contented help.

Perhaps I have written too much, in the opinion
of some, about the workers on my farm, but those
who have had experience with the labor question
in the country can appreciate the tremendous value
of the codperation of reliable assistants. When I
took up the business of farming I had no idea of
following too closely in beaten paths; I intended
to, and have taken little excursions off to the side,
some of them at very abrupt angles; where they
have been successful it has been due in a great
measure to the men who have worked with me, and
our failures have been caused by no lack of effort
or interest on any one’s part. Are not such men
entitled to an interest in my business? My profit-
sharing plan has been condemned by some, but
without it I would not have efficient labor, and
without efficient labor I would not have my farm.

In a city business enterprise the faithful keeper
of the books, the trustworthy cashier, the able
salesman, all are valuable assets of the business,
and the guiding minds of the institution prize those
competent helpers that are so essential to success.

_ 214

THAT FARM

They reward them for their services with annual
increases in salary and additional gifts of money at
Christmas or New Year’s time. Why should I not
try to deal in a similar way with the men who have
helped me hew facts out of theories? The con-
stant efficient superintendence of Frank Waters,
the thrift and energy of Charles Weber, and the
untiring, well-directed activity of James Dolan
have enabled me to do in fact what I had only
accomplished in more or less correct theories.

I have worked to bring my land up to a high
state of productiveness, for, needless to say, that
is the purpose of a business farm. There is no
more sense in undertaking to farm successfully on
poor land than there would be to try to win a Van-
derbilt Cup race with a machine running on one
cylinder.

There are very few available farms in the East
to-day that are ina profitably productive condition,
and in going into the country one can count on
meeting this difficulty. But during the time re-
quired for the amelioration of the soil a farm can
be made to pay if one will exercise some care in its
management; for crops can be raised from the very
start, even though they are not “‘bumper”’ crops.

Like almost every other farmer, I had an insufhi-
cient supply of natural manure at hand to nourish
the soil properly, so I resorted to artificial fertili-

215

THAT FARM

zers. Although I am not a chemist, I have found
the chemistry of the soil a most interesting and
profitable study. Through the medium ofanalyses
I have come to know every acre of my farm, and
in most instances I have been able to get better
results from the use of chemicals than I could
have gotten from any natural manure, and in much
shorter time. One’s brain need not have been
hothoused for decades in a college or laboratory to
enable it to appreciate the fact that different plants
require for their proper development certain chem-
ical foods at different periods of their growth.
Analyses of the soil and fertilizing instructions may
be had for the cost of the postage that is required
to carry the request to the State experiment sta-
tion. And from experience I have found out the
truth and value of another lesson that I learned
before I owned an acre of farm land — that is,
tillage. I believe that deep, thorough cultivation
of the soil is as important as fertilization.

Because a farm has been brought up to a high
state of productiveness it does not necessarily
follow that it is a financial success, although in
most instances such is the case. ‘The money profit
in farming depends entirely upon the manner in
which crops are disposed of; we can learn from
others how to till and sow and harvest properly,
but in the matter of selling crops most advanta-

216

THAT FARM

geously one must be his own master and pupil.
The best crops to raise depend upon the neighbor-
hood in which one is located, and the best way of
selling them rests with the man who produces them.
By selling my milk at retail I get 100 per cent,
more for it than my neighbor gets for his; some
waxed paper, a pasteboard carton, and a sausage
mill enable me to get nearly 100 per cent. more for
my hog than I would otherwise receive; I have
trebled the revenue from my market garden by the
use of a retail vegetable wagon; by grinding and
mixing my grain I have added from Io to 25 per
cent. toits value. I have free water power, I will
admit, but the same practice could be profitably
carried on with a steam or gasolene engine. Ifthe
average farmer would buy an engine and a grinding
mill he would derive excellent interest from his in-
vestment each year in the work he could do on his
own farm alone. But a great many farmers seem
opposed to improved machinery. They laughed
at my sulky cultivators, and said I could not work
gang plows in my fields. When I planted my corn
by machinery instead of cross marking the fields
and sowing the grain by hand, they told me that
the weeds would come up in the rows and choke
the corn. And Uncle Tom Stevens bids fair to go
to his grave unreconciled to my corn harvester.
None of the devices that I used were inventions

217

THAT FARM

of my own, nor were my farm practices anything
but creations of other minds. They had proven
practical when used by others, soit was only natu-
ral that I should adopt them. My attempts at
scientific farming are very amateurish compared
with the methods practised in some other localities,
but here where I am they seem very advanced.
The guiding hand that led me into the country
brought me into the midst of a people who hold to
ancient farming methods with a strange, inexplic-
able stubbornness that shuts out advancement and
prosperity.

In the matter of feeding my stock, I have tried
to exercise the greatest care and economy, keeping
in mind at all times the welfare of the animals. It
is surprising how rapidly profits can disappear
through a manger; and as a rule, where there is
negligence in feeding, the animal suffers as well as
your purse. We make it a practice to feed corn
fodder instead of hay; the nutritive value, I judge
from results, is about the same, but the market
value is tremendously different. By feeding fod-
der I can winter a colt, for example, at a cost (for
forage) of $10.80, while the cost of timothy hay for
the same period of six months would be about $28.
All of our horse and cattle feed is ground before-
hand; it is a practice that pays well for the work
that it requires. With a cream separator we are

218

THAT FARM

able to get, for almost nothing, the greater part of
the food required by our hogs.

Soiling is a practice that we have found to be
most beneficial to our cattle and profitable to our-
selves, and I am going to stick to it until I learn of
some more practical plan for feeding my stock. It
enables a man to exercise the care that is so neces-
sary in the proper maintenance of a dairyherd. A
cow is a perfect manufacturing machine, and the
finished article that she yields in the milk pail de-
pends almost entirely upon the raw material that
is fed to her and the manner in which it is given.
It requires an acre of good pasture land to support
one cow during the grazing season; in most instan-
ces two acres are hardly sufficient. If that one
acre were planted in soiling crops it would supply
feed enough for ten cows, and they would not be
subjected to the heat and flies while they were
eating.

Another thing that I have found indispensable
on a farm, or, more correctly speaking, three other
things, are the Day Book, Cash Book, and Ledger.
Not only a general record of the business should be
kept in them, but separate accounts of each de-
partment. Every possible source of revenue on a
farm should be encouraged and developed, but
none should be made to support another. Nocity
merchant would continue an unprofitable depart-

219

THAT FARM

ment of his business, but nine farmers in ten will
do it. Where those books are not kept there you
will find an absence of management, and where
business management does not exist failure thrives.
Keep a record of accounts even if it is in the back
of the almanac that hangs by the kitchen clock,
but keep it and study it, and almost unconsciously
you will begin to weed out expenditures and culti-
vate receipts.

The horse breeding feature of our business is of
no little importance, and some day I am going into
it more extensively. Bred as our colts are they
should develop into good cross-country or farm
horses, and both types are as much in demand to-
day as they were before the automobile was in-
vented. Next year we will begin handling the
colts that give any promise as hunters, and if they
show quality, as they no doubt will, they can be
readily disposed of at good prices as four-year-olds.
The remaining ones can be sold as unbroken three-
year-olds at a figure that pays well for producing
them. It is a common belief with many people
that a three-year-old colt cannot be put upon the
market at a profit. Even when the colt sells for
a good price, they argue that the cost of producing
him is so great that the difference in price does not
justify the time and money spent upon him. Asa
matter of fact, where we feed them for nearly six

220

THAT FARM

months in the year the annual cost of their keep is
a little less than $20 each.

This coming year we are going to have some
turkeys to market. The young birds we hatched
last season have developed into a splendid flock
of fifty. We shall follow old Mr. Gaines’s direc-
tions religiously, and if we share the success that
he enjoys we will have another item of income to
add to the farm’s credit at the end of the year.
Weber has thirty-five eggs which he has collected
from the different nests during the past few days.

The greatest mistake that I made when I began
farming was not planting an orchard. In the
development of other things I neglected that
highly profitable feature of farming. If I were
starting in again I would put out my orchard first
and develop the rest of the farm afterward. In
going into farming a man of my age generally fails
to appreciate the value of an orchard for the reason
that a few years are required for its development,
and that period of apparent inactivity causes him
to devote his time to crops that mature more
quickly. He does not realize that there are few
better things toleave after him than a good orchard.
And there is no department of agriculture more
interesting and satisfactory than fruit growing.
But I am negotiating now for 300 acres of land
that adjoin my farm on the east. When I get it I

221

THAT FARM

am going to put out peach and apple trees on 100
acres; the remaining 200 acres will, no doubt, be
used by Junior in the expansion of his pet hobby —
the hog industry. When they are not on the same
ground both pay very well, so the 300 acres will be
turned to good account.

Another branch of farming that is going to be
extensively practised here in the East before long
is the raising of beef cattle. There are thousands
of acres of land beautifully adapted to the purpose
and they can be bought at a price that will enable
a man to carry on the business very profitably.
The country needs more beef, and our Eastern
land needs the cattle. Sooner or later we are
bound to bring these together.

Eight miles from my farm there is a place of
1,200 acres that was bought some years ago by an
actor, a very prominent man in his profession, by
the way, who put in some extensive high-priced
improvements on the property. Those who pro-
fess to know say he spent $50,000 on the residence
and outbuildings, but unless I am a poor judge in
matters of that kind, twice that amount would
hardly cover the cost of the improvements that I
looked over the day I went to see the property.
Of course the farm is rocky; it is in the hills, and
perhaps not more than 200 acres of it could be
worked with machinery, but there is plenty of grass

222

THAT FARM

on it, better by far than on some of the grazing
land out in the Western cattle country, and there
is water everywhere. That place is begging a pur-
chaser to-day at $18,000. The actor man who
owned it lost all he had three or four years ago (it
was all in the papers at the time), and a land shark
in our town got hold of the place; he is offering it
for sale at that price, so there is no telling what the
poor actor got for it.

But just imagine such a thing. Less than five
miles from a depot on one of the best railroads in
the country, within sixty miles of New York City,
and at $15 an acre! To earn 6 per cent. on that
price would mean 90 cents annually per acre. A
steer turned out to graze would earn seven times
that much in one season, and all the work attached
to it would be turning him into the pasture and
taking him out again. Wewon’t have the sombre-
roed cow-puncher of the plains, and his roman-
tic lawlessness, but we are going to have some
practical cattlemen carrying on their business
‘close t’ home” beforelong. Wait and see.

But of all the branches of my farm, each contrib-
uting as it does to the general welfare of the enter-
prise,the one that has always given me most pleasure
is my dairy. The cattle are a never-ending
source of interest to me. I know each individual
cow, her disposition and her record, and hardly a

223

THAT FARM

day passes that I do not carefully look over the
milk sheets. I like to go into the barn, particu-
larly during the winter time, just to fuss and play
with them. Down between the rows of stanchions
I go and slip them little bits of something extra
here and there, and it is surprising how they look
for°my visits: There is one herfer in particular
that was out of sorts for a long time; we doctored
her and tickled her appetite for many weeks with
delicacies that were not on the regular dairy bill of
fare, and now she is terribly spoiled. Unless I go
to her first, in my visits to the barn, she shakes her
head and jumps up and down in the stanchion until
the whole herd becomes restless.

But I suppose I like them so much because they
are constantly working. One must be contented
with an annual crop of hay or grain, but the dairy
cow pays her dividends twicea day. Asa business
proposition how can she fail to appeal to any one,
for she returns each year about four times the
amount of money spent upon her. There is an
army of admirers ready always to sing the praises
of each breed, but in my opinion the ideal dairy
cow is the Guernsey; the breed has served me well.

(224

CHAPTER XX

IN WHICH I LIGHT A CIGAR ON THE VERANDA
AND PHILOSOPHIZE

HUS have I sought to summarize the com=
mercial side of the life I have chosen in
which to spend my later years. Each

feature of it is a separate and distinct enterprise
filled with the most interesting details. Active
and ever changing, it lacks the monotonous routine
of so many other occupations. To produce a
better cow, or raise a better chicken, or increase
the yield of corn, all hold a particular charm for
me which I never felt when I tried to sell more
linen or lingerie. |

I have prospered in this life, perhaps to some ex-
tent because the love I had for it and the confidence
I felt in its possibilities leveled many of the obsta-
cles that obstruct the way to success. Out of the
relic of James Bellair’s farm we have built a pros-
perous business. It has been a satisfaction to me
to learn by actual experience that most of the
theories which I adopted in the days of my library

225

THAT FARM

farming, and which have been so bitterly assailed
by those who refuse to learn them, are in reality
the basic principles of successful agriculture.

My original purpose in coming to the country
was to find a congenial home for my four boys. I
would have liked to see all of them face the future
from the security of a well-conducted farm, but I
feel no regret because three of them have elected
otherwise, although I question their business judg-
ment. I have, at least, been instrumental in start-
ing one of my sons in a scheme of life that is not
without a bright coloring of opportunity. I have
had some experience in the commercial world; for
nearly forty years I followed the hazardous course
of a business career in the city. In that time I
turned a great many sharp corners and left fur on
most of them, so I feel that I have performed no
mean parental kindness in directing a son along
another and a better way to journey through life.

There were some unpleasant incidents in my
“Searly: career’’+as a farmer— little experiences
that a man of my age tries to avoid — but they
seem to have worked themselves into adjustment
in the regular course of events. Even old Blake,
the bank president, never misses an opportunity
to stop and chat with me, although I must admit
that my attention is generally divided between his
strange sharp eyes and his inseparable diamond

226

THAT FARM

shirt stud. On the other hand I profited by the
philosophy of old Layton Davidson, and such men
as Uncle Tom Stevens I am proud to have as
neighbors. Frequently when I can spare the
time I drive over to Uncle Tom’s for the purpose
of drawing on his store of quaint knowledge. When
he comes to visit me we smoke a cigar or two and
perhaps I may tell him of the years I spent swap-
ping millinery and hosiery and dress-goods for a
living. But I have never been able to get him to
endorse my way of farming.

I am no sentimentalist; I have tried to make it
clear that I look upon my farm as a business and
as such I derive my satisfaction from it. But I
would be hardly human, certainly not quite candid,
if I did not admit that the calm hills about us and
the peace of sunny fields had wrought their spell
upon me. And I fear my wife’s fond heart would
break if she were obliged to leave it all now. Yes,
there is something to it besides the business aspect,
and perhaps I am old enough to be allowed to
acknowledge it.

The independence of the farmer is one of the
things that has always appealed to me. To be
sure, by dint of hard work I had achieved some
measure of independence in the dry-goods business.
I had become my own boss, and no combination
or trust had risen in my line to rob me of the fruits

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of my individual effort. But never till I lived my
life and conducted my business on my own acres
did I truly comprehend the full meaning of inde-
pendence.

Perhaps it is the realization that I am passing
middle life that drives this home to me. I have
friends —- contemporaries — who are this day
worrying about the future — men who have la-
bored all their lives for another, who have never
been their own masters, and whose very existence
depends upon a wage. Thank God, I have my
farm, and am spared the bitterness of want in my
declining years. Though all the cows and hogs
may die, and the corn wither in my fields, there 1s
still a roof for our heads, and enough will always
grow to feed us.

Above all else, in the atmosphere of business
farming we have made a home for ourselves here
in the hills, a home such as few can boast of. Not
a temporary anchorage susceptible to the whims
of fortune, but a home where one can stand on the
honest ground and the very atmosphere is filled
with the sweet music of the name. Surrounded
by all the blessings that one could wish for, we have
found contentment, and at a time in our lives
when we can best appreciate and enjoy it.

Time works a wonderful influence over us, and
in the even balance of our mature years we weigh

228

THAT FARM

events otherwise than we did when youth’s spon-
taneous enthusiasms and prejudices dragged us
hurriedly along through experience. In the com-
fortable quiet of a spring evening on the veranda
of a country house, the lazy curling cigar smoke no
longer shapes itself into fantastic dreams of the fu-
ture around the head of a man who is sixty-five,
and who has been in the dry-goods business; he
rather looks upon it as an effective defence against
the intrusion of an occasional mosquito. If by
chance the imagination should be affected, the
smoke pictures would probably be of the approach-
ing season’s pig crop or corn yield. Perhaps if I
were not so busy with the impending farm work
there might creep into my vision some of the dull
hues of twilight, and the “‘lengthening shadows”
of the hope-poor sentimentalist might rob my fu-
ture plans of their brightness, but out of this new
life in the fields there has been born to me a boyish
enthusiasm that holds scant respect for the “‘des-
tiny that shapes our ends.”

I am too old to snap hastily at conclusions, and
young enough not to be discouraged by the effort
that is the father of every legitimate success. I
know what it means to struggle for a livelihood,
and since I came into the country I have learned
what it is to succeed. Those who persist in moan-
ing a constant criticism against the farm, like the

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THAT FARM

critics of other things, are the children of ignorance
or inexperience to whom there is no note of glad-
ness, except the echo of their own wail. To tell them
of the wealth of the fields would be folly, but the
workers of the world will find a rich harvest of life’s
good things in agriculture.

When the music of the metropolis begins to grate
on you, city brother, and the glittering lights of the
avenue look like signals in a tunnel, do not think
that hope has been scuttled, nor that life is a joke
or a tragedy. Come where the sunshine will
bleach despondency and cynicism out of your heart
— come through the open gateway of That Farm
into the promised land.

THE END

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THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORE
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

SUE ULL

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